Sam's Twin
by Trenzalore
Summary: Sam has a twin—Anne—and the three were raised as hunters. Sam left and lost contact with his twin and Dean leaving them for college, Anne stayed with their father and Dean fighting monsters and looking for the yellow eyed demon. This starts in S1E1 updating Saturdays.
1. Woman in White

**Chapter One: Woman in White**

"Anne!" Dean shouted from the bedroom in the hotel. I am in the bathroom, taking a shower, as Dean very well knows. "Annie!" he shouted out again. He also, very annoyingly, knocked on the door to the bathroom loud.

I decided to shout back before he barges in here. "What?!" this is the first time I've been able to shower in two weeks and if he takes this away from me then God help him.

"We've got to go," Great, of course. I mumbled a string of curses aimed at Dean as I reluctantly turned off the shower and wrapped a towel around me, I left my clothes out on the bed. "Hurry!"

As I opened the door I see Dean shoving his clothes into his bag. "I'll meet you in the car, let me get dressed." Dean nodded and left me alone to change into clothes. I sighed, _so much for my nice hot shower._ We've been on the road so much lately that we haven't had time to stop at a hotel and eat or, more importantly, shower.

Not wanting to hear Dean go on and on about how long it took me to put on some clothes I dressed in a hurry and pulled my brown hair away from my face in a ponytail and threw the rest of my belongings into my backpack and ran out the door.

When I got into the Impala Dean grumbled, "It's about time you got here." To which I rolled my eyes. Dean hit the gas before I'm properly buckled in, forcing me to fly forward before I caught myself and hit Dean's arm.

"Where are we going? Did you get a lead about dad?" That's the only thing that could make him want to leave in this big of a hurry, either that or Sam just called saying he wants to come back.

Dean shook his head. "Uh, no, nothing on dad yet," he paused for a moment, the radio filling the silence between the two of us before he finally spoke. "We're going to get Sammy." I could feel the smile spread across my face. Sam's my twin and I haven't seen him in two years, I miss him so much but I also want to rip him limb from limb. "I found out his address and we're going to go pay him a visit, see if he'll come join us in our search."

Nodding I turned up the volume on the radio. "'Course he will, he—despite all the fights he gets into with dad—does still love him, and I can always put on the waterworks if all else fails." That got Dean chuckling, he glanced over at me with a glimmer in his eye. We all knew that I could beat Sam's puppy dog eyes by a long shot.

* * *

We pulled in front of Sam's apartment and sat in the car for a second. He actually has a proper home. That's something that I never thought about until now, he comes home every night to the same place, probably watches tv and doesn't even think about us.

The two of us went up the stairs and stood by the door and a window. "I'm guessing we're not gonna ring the doorbell?" I raised an eyebrow at my older brother who just chuckled and walked over to the window, beginning to open it. "Of course not." Sighing I make my way over to Dean, helping him breaking into my brother's apartment.

Dean, always the gentleman, climbed into Sam's apartment (or at least I hoped it was his) and then pulled me in after him. "I'm going to go check for the kitchen, you find Sam." I nodded.

He's going to go get a beer and then wait for me to find him. Typical, but what can I do? Anyway, he'll more than likely bring me one too—that is _if_ Sam has any beer in the first place. We split up, he went over towards where he thought the kitchen would be, and I went the opposite way. I don't see anything that looks like Sam and trust me it's hard to miss him, he's like a mammoth.

I managed to find the living room, there are pictures on a table, they're of Sam and some chick. His girlfriend more than likely, due to the fact that there are a few of them kissing. There are pictures of Sam with other people, too, but the one that sticks out to me is one of mom. She's standing there with her arms wrapped around dad, they're young. That's when I hear a crashing sound coming from where Dean walked off to.

Running into the room where the crash seemed to come from I called out. "Dean! You okay?" I saw them, Sam has Dean pinned to the ground.

Sam turns his head toward the sound of my voice. "Anne? You're here too?" He let go of his older brother and stood up, walking over to me and pulls me into a hug. "God, it's been forever since I've seen you."

I returned the hug, it's been so long since I've seen him, but when I spoke I couldn't help all the venom that spilt into my voice. "Yeah, well that's your fault, Sam." I could feel him tense up when I spoke, and I slightly regretted saying that, but it's true.

When he let go of me Sam turned back to Dean who was now standing up. "What the hell are you two doing here?" Of course, there would be no 'oh hello, how are you doing?' just cut straight to the point.

"Well I was looking for a beer." Dean answered, looking around him like a beer would just pop out of nowhere just because he wanted one.

All Sam did was roll his eyes. "What the hell are you doing here?"

I answered this one before Dean manages to get Sam to kill us. "We need to talk."

Sam just looked over me at our older brother and then back to me. "Uh, the phone?"

"I've tried," I started. "I've lost count how many times I have tried to call you, but you never once picked up the phone." The betrayal in my voice is now burning in the back of my mouth, slowly leaking into my speech. "I've left hundreds of voice mails and have you answered even one of them?"

There was movement at a doorway. A woman, wearing a Smurf crop top and short shorts. "Sam?"

All three of us turn our heads at the same time to the new voice.

"Jess. Hey. Anne, Dean, this is my girlfriend, Jessica." He gestured to the woman, and I could _see_ Dean mentally undressing her.

Jess's eyebrows rose. "Wait, your brother and sister, Anne and Dean?" she smiled at us as Sam nodded.

Dean moved closer to her. "Oh I love the Smurfs. You know, I gotta tell you. You are completely out of my brother's league." I walked over to him and dragged him back over to where Sam is standing making sure to elbow him in between his ribs and mouthed 'behave' to him.

"Just let me put something on." Jess looked around and stopped at Sam's face.

She started to move but Dean's voice stopped her. "No, no, no. I wouldn't dream of it. Seriously." I glared at him, but he didn't look at me.

"Don't mind him, he's more or less harmless, just can't keep his mouth shut, such a shame." This time Dean looked over at me and I gave him an annoyed look.

He started talking again, another shame. "Anyway, we've gotta borrow your boyfriend here, talk about some private family business. But, uh, nice meeting you."

Before anyone could move Sam spoke. "No," he walked away from us, and put an arm around Jess. "No, whatever you want to say, you can say it in front of her." Does this mean that he's told her about what we do or he just thinks that we dropped by for a social visit?

"Okay," Dean turned and looked at both of them, straight on. "Um. Dad hasn't been home in a few days." This did nothing to Sam, he just stood there with a hard look in his eyes. Does he not care about dad this much?

He looked Dean in the eye. "So he's working overtime on a Miller Time shift. He'll stumble back in sooner or later." Sam has such a high opinion of dad. But I understand where he's coming from though, they didn't get along very well. Never did never will.

"Dad's on a hunting trip. And he hasn't been home in a few days." I spoke, and at my words Sam's expression stays the same, Jess staring up at him, confused out of her mind. I don't blame her, not at all.

This got through to Sam. "Jess, excuse us, we have to go outside." Sam lead us out into the stairwell, Sam threw on some clothes on the way out. "You can't just break in, middle of the night and expect me to hit the road with you."

"Sam—" I reached out for Sam's arm, stopping him from going down anymore stairs. "Dad's missing, we need you to help us find him, please." It worked for a while, Sam's eyes melted before going back to what they were earlier, dead.

He shook his head. "Remember the poltergeist in Amherst? Or the Devil's Gates in Clifton? He was missing then, too. He's always missing, and he's always fine." So much faith in the man.

Dean stood in front of Sam. "Not for this long. Now are you gonna come with us or not?"

He shook his head. "I'm not." My heart fell. Of course, he's going to want to stay here and build a life and whatnot.

"Why not?" I pressed.

The overgrown moose tried to keep his voice level. "I swore I was done hunting. For good."

"Look Sam," I started. "I know that it wasn't easy, but it wasn't that bad." It was true enough, but that wasn't a good enough answer for Sam.

Sam raised his eyebrows at that. "Yeah? When I told dad I was scared of the thing in my closet, he gave me a .45." the two of us, Dean and I shrugged.

"Well, what was he supposed to do?" Dean crinkled his forehead, wondering why Sam would ever question their father.

I bit my lip, a nervous habit of mine. "Dean," he looked at me. "He has a point. We were nine years old; most parents tell their kids that they shouldn't be scared of the dark." I always did side with Sam in the end, no matter the argument. We always just seemed to end up defending one another—unless we were fighting against each other.

Dean glowered at me, annoyed. "But you should be afraid of the dark; you two know damn well what's out there."

"Yeah, I know, but still. The way we grew up, after mom was killed, and dad's obsession to find the thing that killed her." Dean looked away. "But we still haven't found the damn thing. So we kill everything we can find."

Dean met his younger brother's eyes. "We save a lot of people doing it, too."

The three of us were silent until Sam broke the silence. "You think mom would have wanted this for us?" Dean rolled his eyes, he opened a door to a short flight of stairs from the door to the parking lot and they walked through.

When they reached the parking lot Sam started talking again. "The weapon training and melting the silver into bullets? We were raised like warriors." I grabbed Sam's hand and didn't let go until he turned around and stared at me.

"What are you gonna do? You're just gonna live some normal, apple pie life? You're gonna leave me and Dean looking for dad who could be God knows where? Sam, like it or not, you're a part of this family and we need your help." I held onto his gaze throughout my rambling. "Please, Sam."

He sighed. "Not a _normal_ life. A safe one. And I—Anne, you know that I will do anything for you, but, just not this. I'll call you, you can have dinner with Jess and me, but I'm not going to go hunt again." Sam paused. "I was just going to college, it was dad who said if I was gonna go I should stay gone. And that's what I'm doing."

Dean came back into the conversation. "Yeah well, dad's in real trouble right now. If he's not dead already. I can feel it." Sam didn't answer. "We can't do this without you."

"Yes, you can."

"We don't want to." I gave Sam the puppy eyes he uses on everyone.

Sam sighed, looking around, a look in his eyes that seemed like he was thinking a million possibilities at once. "What was he hunting?"

I smiled as Dean opened the trunk of the Impala, then the spare compartment to reveal arsenal. He props the compartment open with a shotgun and digs through the clutter. "All right, let's see, where the hell did I put that thing?"

"So when dad left, why didn't you go with him?" Sam wondered aloud.

Dean, engrossed with the clutter, didn't answer, expecting me to answer, naturally. "We were working or own gig. This, voodoo thing, down in New Orleans."

At that moment Dean pulled out some papers in a folder. "All right, here we go. So dad was checking out this two-lane blacktop just outside of Jericho California. About a month ago, this guy," Dean handed over a piece of paper to Sam, who looked over them as Dean continued. "They found his car, but he vanished. Completely MIA."

Sam looks down at the paper and looks it over. It is a printout of an article from the Jericho Herald. Its headline read, "Centennial Highway Disappearance" and was dated September nineteenth two-thousand-and-five. It has a man's picture, under it reads, "Andrew Carey MISSING". Sam finishes reading it and looks back up at Dean.

"Maybe he was kidnapped." He guesses.

I shrugged. "Yeah well, there's another one in April." Dean handed Sam another paper.

"There's another one in December 'oh-four, 'oh-three, 'ninety-eight, 'ninety-two," Dean handed Sam a paper for each date he mentioned. "ten of them over the past twenty years." Dean takes the articles back from Sam and puts them back in the folder in his trunk. "All men, all the same five-mile stretch of road."

Dean pulls a bag out from another part of the arsenal. "It started happening more and more, so dad went to go dig around. That was about three weeks ago. We haven't heard from him since, which is bad enough."

I reached into the trunk and pulled out a handheld tape recorder. "We got this voicemail yesterday." I pressed play and the recording started, it was staticky and the signal is breaking up.

Loud and slightly clear you can hear John Winchester speaking. "Dean…something big is starting to happen…I need to try and figure out what's going on. It may… be very careful, Dean. We're all in danger." I pushed stop on the recorder.

"You know there's EVP on that?" Sam started, the centre of his forehead crinkled.

A smile appeared on Dean's face. "Not bad, Sammy. Kinda like riding a bike, isn't it?" Sam shook his head at his older brother. "All right. I slowed the message down, I ran it through a gold wave, I took out the hiss and this is what I got."

Again, I pressed play. This time, instead of John speaking, it was a woman's voice. "I can never go home…"

"Never go home." Sam again correctly stated. I threw the recorder to Dean who puts it back into the trunk and shut it close.

"You know, in almost two years I've never bothered you, never asked you for a thing." Leaning on the trunk of the car Dean stared at Sam.

Sam looks away, thinking over the pros and cons before sighing, and then looking back at his big brother and sister. "All right. I'll go. I'll help find him."

Anne smirks and leans against the trunk of the car next to Dean. "Told 'ya he'd say yes."

"But," Sam started and Anne's face fell. She just knew that Sam would find a way to get out of hunter for good again. "I have to get back first thing Monday. Just wait here." My face grew a smile as soon as he said for us to wait there, that meant that he would come with us. And one of them would have to sit in the back…

"SHOTGUN!" I called out and raced to the passenger door as Sam turned to go back to the apartment.

He turns back when Dean speaks. "What's first thing Monday?" _Who cares?_ I want to shout out to him. Sam's coming with us, having him for just a little bit is good enough for me.

Sam looks uncomfortable as he answers. "I have this…I have an interview."

"What, a job interview? Skip it." I input, waiting by the passenger door, ready to go.

My twin shook his head, "It's a law school interview, and it's my whole future on a plate." _Law school?_ I thought, and the same two words were written all over Dean's face as much as mine, I know Sam is smart, but it still is shocking to know that he's smart enough to get to _law school_.

"Law school?" Dean asked with a smirk on his face.

Sam, wisely, ignored that. "So we got a deal or not?"

I answered for them both, "Yeah, we do."

* * *

**Gas Station**

"I'm gonna go get some snacks," Dean said as he got back in the car after filling up the car and started to park it in a parking spot. "Want anything, Anne?" I nodded and gave him what a wanted.

Sam, cramped in the backseat, tapped me on the shoulder. "Hey, Annie," I turned around in my seat, facing Sam. "Let me see Dean's tapes." So not a good idea, Dean is _super_ protective of his belongings.

"Uh, Sam," I started slowly. "Now, I know you've been away for a while, but there are things in this car—like Dean's music that are sacred to him and if anyone touches them without his consent he _will _murder them. Even if they're related to him." He rolled his eyes and grabbed them himself, reaching over me and I didn't even try to stop him, the guy is like a mammoth, there is no way that I could even try to stop him.

He was looking through them as he talked again. "How have you been, Anne?" Sam didn't look up as he spoke, choosing to look at the tapes that Dean keeps in his car.

I smiled as answered him. "Well, not ungood. And you, Sam, how has college treated you these two years? It couldn't have been so bad, you got yourself a girlfriend."

Sam smiled and looked up at me from the backseat. "Yeah. I think that you would get along with her, just as long as you don't tell her anything embarrassing or hunter things." I laughed. "College was…well, college. It was—in my opinion—better than going around the country hunting."

Very like me, I snorted. "Yeah, I doubt that. I like reading, but, doing school work over hunting? That's not my thing." Sam was the one who snorted this time and went back to looking through Dean's tapes. "I missed you." I blurted out barely able to get them out.

The smile fell off of Sam's face as he looked up at my face. "I missed you too, Annie."

"You—you just left us." I don't know where this is coming from, but it's just flowing from my mouth and I can't stop it. "I've never been apart from you for this long before and you didn't even say goodbye! You just left! I—oh God I can't believe I'm crying." Somehow I ended up crying, that gross snot filled crying.

My vision got blurry because of my tears. "Annie, come here." I felt his arms pull me towards him. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." Somehow I ended up on Sam's lap. My head's resting on Sam's chest, getting his shirt covered in tears. "I should've called or talked to you at some point, but—" I shook my head against his chest.

"No, Sam," I mumbled. "it's not your fault, Sammy. I just—" he shushed me. I picked my head up off Sam. "I'm sorry, I don't know what came over me." Quickly I wiped away my tears, hoping that he wouldn't notice them.

I slid off his lap and into the seat next to him and he kept an arm around me. I leaned against him. "So if you leave me again you better call me every once and a while—or I will find you and you _will_ be sorry." I felt him chuckle.

"Yes ma'am." I elbowed him for that.

That's when Dean came back. "Here you go—Anne? Why're you—were you two have a chick flick moment?" I moved away from Sam and back into the front seat.

"No, where's my food?" He handed me my food, ignoring my choked voice and the my red nose and eyes. As Dean started to get in his seat he then offered some to Sam who declined and went back to going through the tapes.

"So, how'd you pay for that stuff?" Sam asked. "You three still running credit card scams?" he sounded disappointed. Great, the same old argument is coming back again, usually Dean and I stay out of Sam and our dad's arguments, but now that dad isn't here Dean is stepping up to argue with our brother.

Dean looked up at him from the front seat where he was sorting through the snacks that he just bought. "Yeah, well, hunting ain't exactly a pro ball career. Besides, all we do is apply. It's not our fault they send us the cards."

Sam was having none of it, he always had a problem with our way of getting money. "Yeah? And what names did you write on the application this time?"

"Uh, Burt Aframian." Dean said as he glanced at the card.

"That sounds about right. I swear, man, you've gotta update your cassette tape collection." Oh, I was hoping that Sam wouldn't mention the cassettes; Dean is _very_ protective of his music.

There it was. Dean looked over at Sam like he had personally assaulted him. "Why?"

"Well, for one, they're cassette tapes. And two: Black Sabbath? Motorhead? Metallica?" he held up a cassette for each one he named. Dean grabbed back one of the tapes.

I snorted. "It's the greatest hits of mullet rock."

Dean shot me a look. "House rules, Driver picks the music, shotgun—and backseat—shuts their cakeholes." He dropped the tape into the box and started driving out of the gas station.

* * *

**Centennial Highway**

I switched spots with Sam about halfway through so I could lie down and take a nap, when I woke up I heard Sam on the phone.

"Thank you." He closed the phone. "All right. So there's no one matching dad at the hospital or morgue. So that's something."

Dean slowed down the car. "Check it out." I sat up. There's two police cars and several cops at the bridge in front of us. He pulled the car over.

Leaning over in between the two of them I saw Dean open up the glove compartment full of ID's and badges. "So," I started, resting my arms on both of their shoulders. "Who are we going to be today?"

The eldest threw a grin my way. "Marshals." He passed them out to the two of us and we climbed out of the car, careful to walk like we belong there. The police were talking among themselves when we walked up to them.

"You fellas had another one like this just last month, didn't you?" Dean asked, the officers turned and looked at him

One straightened up when he answered Dean. "And who are you?"

Dean flashed the man his badge. "Federal marshals." Sam and I showed them our badges as well, the officers looked at them curiously.

He eyed us. "You all are a little young for marshals, aren't you?" Dean laughs at him, great, I can sense a comeback coming and usually that ends up with him—and sometimes us—arrested.

"Thanks, that's awfully kind of you." I really want to roll my eyes at him, but I should control it. It's not very 'professional' for a marshal to do. "You did have another one just like this, correct?"

An officer nodded. "Yeah, that's right. About a mile up the road. There've been others before that."

"So, this victim, you knew him?" I spoke, recalling the overheard conversation earlier.

The officer nodded again. "Town like this, everybody knows everybody." Dean circled the car, looking around.

"Any connection between the victims, besides that they're all men?" Sam chimed in. Now we're just going back and forth. Dean walked back to us, standing in between me and Sam. I can't help but notice that we're standing in order of tallest, Sam, to shortest, which, sadly, is me.

"No, not so far as we can tell." The officer answered.

Sam glanced around, taking in the scene. "So what's the theory?"

"Honestly, we don't know. Serial murder? Kidnapping ring?" well that's just fantastic, nothing to go on.

"Well, that is exactly the kind of crack police work I'd expect out of you guys." Both Sam and I stepped on one of Dean's feet. He glared at both of us.

Sam steps up to save us. "Thank you for your time." I grab Dean's arm and pull him away. As we're walking away Dean smacks both of us upside the head.

"Ow!" Sam rubbed his head. "What was that for?" I glared up at Dean, fixing my hair where he hit me.

He gave the two of us a glare. "Why'd you have to step on my feet?" rolling my eyes at him I didn't respond, letting Sam do the talking, this is a fight that he got out of for two years. So not fair.

"Why do you have to talk to the police like that?"

Dean stopped and turned to look Sam in the eye. "Come on. They don't really know what's going on. We're all alone on this. I mean, if we're going to find Dad we've got to get to the bottom of this thing ourselves."

I cleared my throat and pulled on Dean's jacket, looking over at the sheriff and two FBI agents walking towards us. The sheriff spoke to us, "Can I help you?"

The eldest Winchester grinned 'innocently' "No sir, we were just leaving." He nods at the two FBI agents as they watched us go.

* * *

After we left the crime scene, we went to walk a little while later, and we pass a woman on the sidewalk who is tacking up missing papers on the walls of buildings. It read, "MISSING TROY SQUIRE"

"I bet that's her." Dean commented. We walked up to her. "You must be Amy."

The girl nodded. "Yeah."

Again Dean spoke for us. "Tom told us about you, we're his cousins." Dean smiled at her. "I'm Dean, that's Sammy, and that's Annie." We smiled and waved at the mention of our names.

"He never mention you to me." I was hoping that he would have at least one of our names in his family. Of course not, nothing goes easy for us.

Laughing it off, Dean comes up with a solution. "Well, that's Troy, I guess. We're not around much, we're up in Modesto."

"So," oh thank God, Sam's come to the rescue, we just might make it out of here without ending up in jail. "So, we're looking for him too, and we're kinda asking around."

Another girl comes up to Amy and puts her hand on Amy's arm. "Hey, are you okay?"

"Yeah," That girl really likes that word.

"You mind if we ask you a couple questions?" I asked, speaking up for the first time.

The girl nodded and we walked into a dinner, the stranger lingering. When we got to the booth table, I pushed passed Sam and sat next to Dean first, so that Sam would have to be the one to sit in a chair at the end instead of me. Across from us is Amy and her friend. The waitress came and we ordered our drinks, us three got coffees and the two girls got coke.

After a bit, Amy launched into the story of what happened. "I was on the phone with Troy. He was driving home. He said he would call me right back, and...he never did."

"He didn't say anything strange, or out of the ordinary?" I asked, taking a drink of my coffee that's just cooling off now.

She shook her head. "No, nothing I can remember."

"I like your necklace."

Amy holds the pendant she's wearing, a pentagram in a circle, and looks down at it. "Troy gave it to me. Mostly to scare my parents—" She laughs. "—with all that devil stuff."

That got Sam laughing a little, looking down, then back up. I looked over at Sam before answering, knowing he is thinking the same thing I am. "Actually, it means just the opposite. A pentagram is protection against evil. Really powerful. I mean, if you believe in that kind of thing."

Dean takes his arm back from the back of my seat. "Okay. Thank you, Unsolved Mysteries." He leaned forward. "Here's the deal, ladies. The way Troy disappeared, something's not right. So if you've heard anything..." The two friends look at each other. "What is it?"

"Well, it's just... I mean, with all these guys going missing, people talk." The friend, Rachel, she said her name is Rachel.

Us three siblings spoke at the same time. "What do they talk about?"

The two girls looked amused for a second at us before going into storytelling mode. "It's kind of this local legend. This one girl? She got murdered out on Centennial, like decades ago." Sam nodded appropriately. "Well, supposedly she's still out there." Again, nodding. "She hitchhikes, and whoever picks her up? Well, they disappear forever." Dean and I look at each other, and then over to Sam, this sounds like a good case.

We left a bit after that and went to do some research at the library. We have a web browser open to the archive search page for the _Jericho Herald_. We searched "Female Murder Hitchhiking" and the screen tells him there are "(0) Results". Dean then replaces "Hitchhiking" with "Centennial Highway" with the same response. Sam and I are sitting on either side of him, watching.

Sam gets impatient. "Let me try." Dean slaps his hand away.

"I got it." Sam then shoves Dean's rolly chair out of the way and takes over. "Dude!" He punched Sam in the shoulder. "You are such a control freak."

"So angry spirits are born out of violent death, right?" Sam asks, ignoring Dean's comment.

I nodded. "Yeah."

"Well maybe it's not murder." He replaces the word 'murder' with 'suicide' and searches it again. Up comes an article, 'Suicide on Centennial' and Sam clicks on it. It's dated April 25, 1981. The article read:

_A local woman's drowning death was ruled a suicide, the county Sheriff's Department said earlier today. Constance Welch, 24, of 4636 Breckenridge Road, leapt off Sylvania Bridge, at mile 33 of Centennial Highway, and subsequently drowned last night._

_Deputy J. Pierce told reporters that, hours before her death, Ms. Welch logged a call with 911 emergency services. In a panicked tone, Ms. Welch described how she found her two young children, 5 and 6, in the bathtub, after leaving them alone for several [minutes]. She reported that their complex-[...]_

_What happened to my children was a terrible accident. And it must have been too much for my wife. Our babies were gone, and Constance just couldn't bear it," said husband Joseph Welch. "Now I ask that you all please respect my privacy during this trying time."_

_At the time of the children's death and Ms. Welch's subsequent suicide, Mr. Welch was at the Frontier auto salvage yard, where he works the graveyard shift as associate manager._

_"Connie might have been quiet, but she was the sweetest, most caring girl I ever knew," said Deanna Kripke, a neighbor. "She just doted on those children."_

"This was 1981. Constance Welch, twenty-four years old, jumps off Sylvania Bridge, drowns in the river." I said after skimming the article.

Dean looked at the screen again. "Does it say why she did it?"

Sam answered for me. "Yeah,"

"What?"

"An hour before they found her, she calls 911." Sam said, mesmerized by the screen.

I picked up where he left off without missing a beat. "Apparently her two little kids are in the bathtub. She leaves them alone for a minute—"

"and when she comes back, they aren't breathing."

"Both die." We finish at the same time.

Dean just looks at the two of us like we're freaks. "Please tell me you're not going to start that up again." We just grin at him and he groans.

Sam reads a part of the article. "'Our babies were gone, and Constance just couldn't bear it,' said husband Joseph Welch."

Looking over at the picture, I focused on the bridge. "Does that bridge look familiar to you?"

* * *

We drove over to the Sylvania Bridge and got out, it's already dark outside as we make our way over to the edge. The three of us look down over the ridge and see the river below us.

"So this is where Constance took the swan dive." Dean put gently.

I rolled my eyes at him. "Very poetic."

Sam ignored my comment. "So you think Dad would have been here?"

"Well, he's chasing the same story and we're chasing him." I looked up at Sam, Dean started walking again and we followed him.

Sam used his long legs to get ahead of me and next to Dean. "Okay, so now what?"

"Now we just keep digging until we find him. Might take a while." Dean said.

The tallest one stopped walking. "I told you, I've gotta be back by Monday—" Dean turns back to his brother and I catch up to them.

"Monday. Right. The interview." Sam nods, and says "Yeah". Dean continues on. "Yeah, I forgot. You're really serious about this, aren't you? You think you're just going to become some lawyer? Marry your girl?" I know when to not intervene and now is one of those times, I'll just make sure they don't push the other off the bridge.

"Maybe, why not?" I really think that walking away is my best option. They're going to get into a fight and I find it better to not get involved in their fights. Plus if I just ignore the fact that Sam is going to leave us again then it won't seem like this is our last time hunting together.

Dean wants to fight though—or at least bring up the subject neither of us have asked but all ready know the answer to. "Does Jessica know the truth about you? I mean, does she know about the things you've done?"

The Giant stepped closer to Dean. "No, and she's not ever going to know."

"Well, that's healthy. You can pretend all you want, Sammy. But sooner or later you're going to have to face up to who you really are." He turned around and started walking again, the two of us followed him.

"And who's that?" oh Sammy, why don't you just drop it?

Please, Dean, please, don't provoke him. "You're one of us."

Sam hurried to get in front of Dean. "No. I'm not like you. This is not going to be my life."

The older Winchester looked up at his brother. "You have a responsibility to—"

"To dad?" Sam interrupted. "And his crusade? If it weren't for pictures I wouldn't even know what mom looks like and what difference would it make? Even if we do find the thing that killed her, mom's gone and she isn't coming back."

All of a sudden Dean grabs Sam by the collar and shoves him up against the railing of the bridge and I back away from the two. No one spoke for a while, Dean was the one who finally broke the silence. "Don't talk about her like that." He released his younger brother and continues walking.

Before any of us could say anything the woman, Constance, is standing there, at the edge of the bridge.

"Boys," I said.

Dean nodded. "I see her." Sam and I stand next to Dean as the woman in white comes and looks at us, then steps over the edge. The three of us follow her, looking over the edge of the railing.

"Where'd she go?" Dean asked. I shook my head as Sam told him he doesn't know.

My attention fled to the Impala, it had started on its own "What the—" Dean started.

I gaped at the car. "Who's driving your car?" Dean pulls the keys out of his pocket and jingles them. Both Sam and I glanced at them, but before we could talk anymore the Impala is heading right for us. So our natural reaction is to run in the opposite direction. The car is moving faster than we are, and it'll soon squish us. It's right on our heels now, so with a look, we jump over the railing. As I fell I tried to catch onto something to hold me up, and missed, terrified my hands tried to find anything I can get a grip on, but nothing worked. I fell all the way down.

Good news though, I think the car has stopped.

The next thing I hear is Sam's voice. "Anne! Dean!"

I look around, a few feet from me I see Dean, he's in the mud with me. He looks up and shouts "What?"

"Are you two alright?" How come he's not down here in the mud too?

This time I yell back. "We're just super." I hear Sam laugh. He comes down to where we are, the easier way yet longer . The two of us, Dean and I, climbed out of the mud pile and got back to where the Impala is.

Dean opens the hood of the car to 'check on his baby' and a few minutes later he shuts it close and leans on it.

"Your car alright?" Sam asked, and I wonder if he really cares for the car at all.

The eldest nodded. "Yeah, whatever she did to it, seems all right now. That Constance chick, what a _bitch!_" I rolled my eyes at him.

"Well," I started and moved to sit on the hood of the car next to Dean. "she doesn't want us digging around, that's for sure. So where's the job go from here?" Sam came and sat on the other side of Dean, who throws up his arms in frustration and flicks some mud off of his hands at Sam, and I try to hold in a chuckle.

Sam rams his shoulder into Deans. "You two smell like toilets."

"Shut up." Dean and I say at the same time.

* * *

We arrived at a motel and Dean went up to the counter and handed to credit card under the name of 'Hector Aframian' and ordered one room for us. Sam and I hung back a bit, playing rock paper scissors just for kicks.

The clerk looked over the card and then back up. "You guys having a reunion or something?" Odd, what if there was a real Hector Aframian here and found out about us kind of stealing his .

Sam stopped playing with me and looked at the clerk. "What do you mean?"

"I had another guy, Burt Aframian. He came and bought out a room for the whole month." My eyebrows rose. That _must_ be dad; he was here—or still is here, maybe. Hopefully he's all right, but more than likely he's hurt or dead. "Anyway, here you go, enjoy." He handed Dean the keys and went back to reading a newspaper.

Dean got the room number from him and then silently the three of us made our way to the room, dragging our bags with us. Stepping into the room flashes of our childhood came flooding into my mind.

I remember the days when dad came home from a hunt, drunk, stumbling around the room, throwing himself down on the couch and turning on the TV. Dean, eight years old at the time, knowing it was bad to be around dad when he was like this, would turn to Sammy and me, take our hands and take us to the bed we shared and would lay out our pyjamas for us. He would wait for us to change before tucking us into bed and pull the covers up and say he'd be right back. We could hear him walking up to dad and asking him if he wanted anything to eat or drink, then he'd guide him to the other bed. Next he would climb into bed with us, always in the middle with an arm touching both of us. Most nights I pressed myself to his back or side, stealing his warmth, other times I just curled into a ball and stole most of the blankets.

This made me stare at Dean, he looked at both of us, making sure we were in the room before putting up salt lines around the door and windows. "All right," he says, "Let's go check out that room."

Grinning I followed him, careful not to break the line, Sam trailing behind me. Once we found the room Sam picks the lock and we go in. There's maps on the walls and papers having to do with the case, they're everywhere in the room. Behind me I hear the door shut. Books are piled on the tables and bed, junk food floods the floor—very disgusting.

"Whoa," I breathed. The oldest of us three picks up a half-eaten burger and smells it, he recoils at the smell.

"I don't think he's been here for a couple of days at the least." Dean says, standing up off the ground.

Leaning over to touch the salt line on the ground, Sam fingers it. "Salt, cats-eye shells...he was worried. Trying to keep something from coming in."

Papers on the wall grabs my attention. "Guys,"

The giant moose looks up at me. "What have you got there?"

"Centennial Highway victims." I say, not even looking away from the papers. In the corner of my eye I see him nod. "But I don't get it. I mean, different men, different jobs—" there are footsteps behind me. "—ages, ethnicities. There's always a connection, right? What do these guys have in common?"

Sam turns on a lamp. "Dad figured it out."

I give him a look. "What do you mean?"

"He found the same article we did. Constance Welch. She's a woman in white."

Dean looks over at Constance's victims. "You sly dogs." He turns back to us. "All right, so if we're dealing with a woman in white, dad would have found the corpse and destroyed it." I shared a look with Sam, he has so much faith in the man—but who am I to speak, I do whatever Dean says, even sometimes what dad says. You can't blame me for following Dean's orders, he raised Sammy and me whereas dad just disappeared for weeks on end.

"She might have another weakness." I broke eye contact with Sam to stare around the room for any hints.

"Well," Dean looked at me. "Dad would want to make sure." He walked closer to Sam and me. "He'd dig her up. Does it say where she's buried?"

Both of us looked over at Sam. "No, not that I can tell. If I were dad, though," the mental image made me snort. "I'd go ask her husband." He tapped the picture of Joseph Welch. The caption says that he's thirty, but the date on the article is dated 1981, he must be sixty-four or something.

My eyebrows raised. "If he's still alive."

He nodded. "Yes, if." Dean looks at the picture while Sam walks away. I pull Dean's arm down so I can see the paper too. The woman is in a white dress.

"All right," he handed me the paper. "Why don't you two, uh, see if you can find an address, I'm gonna get cleaned up." Dean starts to walk away.

Sam turns. "Hey, Dean?" Dean stops in his tracks and turns back. "What I said earlier," I looked away. "About mom and dad. I'm sorry." His gaze turned to me. "To both of you."

Before Sam could say more Dean holds up a hand. "No chick-flick moments." Sam laughs, and I start to smile.

"All right, Jerk."

"Bitch." They were always doing that. Sam would call Dean a jerk and Dean would call him a bitch. It's the circle of life and if they don't say that I know there's something wrong.

Dean starts to head back to our room, to shower more than likely. I start to follow but Sam grabs my arm. He points to a rosary hanging in front of a large mirror. There's a picture of dad siting on the hood of the Impala with Dean next to him and Sam and me on his lap when we were young. My smile turns sad and without looking I can tell that Sam has the same expression on his face.

"Come on," I drag him out of the room.

When we got back to the hotel Dean was already in the shower as Sam and I got back to the room and took out some clothes to wear and some snacks. Dean was out I took a shower, then Sam after me. When he came out of the shower, I was already laying down on one of the beds while Dean watched TV.

Sam glared at me. "If you sleep there then where will Dean sleep?" Dean came up behind the mammoth and smacked him on the back of his head.

"Either share a bed with Anne or sleep on the couch." He then collapsed on the other bed, unmoving.

The tallest of us kicked Dean's bed muttering, "Jerk."

"Bitch."

Sam sighed and turned off the light and mumbled for me to scoot over. I gave him some of the blanket and it felt like the old days, sharing a bed with Sammy about to fight monsters together. "'Night Sammy. 'Night Dean." There was no reply from Dean, he's probably already asleep. But Sam grunts a "good night" before messing up my hair. A grin came to my face as I felt myself drifting off into sleep.

* * *

Dean's singing woke me up. I'm laying with my back pressed up against Sam's, the room must be fifty degrees, I swear, and the only heat I'm getting is from my twin.

After groaning I shout at Dean. "Shut up!" I felt Sam stir and start to mumble. "Go back to bed, Sammy, Dean's being an idiot." Sam nodded his head and his breathing deepened. Slowly I started to let myself go back to sleep.

A few moments later I woke up cold. Sam is gone. "Sammy?" I opened my eyes a bit, looking around the room. He's sitting at the table, listening to something on his phone. "Sammy? What time is it?"

He looked up at me and put the phone down. "It's—hold on." He pressed a button on his phone and put it back to his ear. "What?" a short pause. "What about you?" He hung up. "Annie, come on, we're leaving—now."

I didn't ask for explanations, I'm not wearing a bra, but I can put it on later, I just hope there's no running involved. Sam went to the window but quickly backed away from it. "Let's go, follow me." Somehow we made it out of the house without letting the cops seeing us with our bags—even Dean's.

"Where are we going?" I breathed.

Barely moving his lips he answered me. "We're going to the Welch house. Dean's been caught."

* * *

**Welch House**

We made it to the Impala and after throwing in the three bags in the back drove off to the Welch house to try and finish up the case. When we got to the house we knocked on the door and the man from the picture (though older), Joseph Welch opening the door.

I smiled. "Hi, are you Joseph Welch?" The man grunted a "Yeah." And between the two of us we got Joseph Welch to talk to us. Sam showed him the picture that we found of dad and us in his motel room as we walked down the junk-filled driveway.

"Yeah," Joseph handed the photo back to me. "He was older, but that's him. He came by three or four days ago. Said he was a reporter."

Sam nodded. "That's right. We're working on a story together."

Joseph gave us bizarre looks. "Well, I don't know what the hell kinda story you're working on. The questions he asked me?" Yeah, this is something I don't like, the talking to people we—or any other hunter—has already talked to. They get suspicious and think that we're crazy, but who can blame them?

"About your wife Constance?" I asked him.

He confirmed it. "He asked me where she was buried."

So he could salt and burn the bones, like he taught us. "And where is that again?" Hopefully he doesn't call the cops like some people have before.

"What, I gotta go through this twice?" Why can't he just play along with us?

I tried to give him a smile that will put his worries to ease. "It's just fast-checking." I paused then added, "If you don't mind."

The man looked paused for a breath, thinking over if he wants to tell us anymore than he already has. "In a plot. Behind my old place over on Breckenridge.

"And why did you move?" Sam asked, looking down at the old man.

"I'm not gonna live in the house where my children died." Who would?

Sam stops walking, and Joseph and I stop as well. "Mr. Welch, did you ever marry again?"

He slightly shook his head. "No way, Constance, she was the love of my life. Prettiest woman I ever known."

That may be true, but, "So you had a happy marriage?" I pushed a bit.

Joseph hesitates. "Definitely."

Before I could say anything else Sam smiled politely at the man. "Well that should do it. Thanks for your time." We turn back towards the Impala, but Sam pauses and turns back to the retreating Joseph Welch. "Mr. Welch, did you ever hear of a woman in white?"

The old man turns around. "A what?"

"A woman in white. Or sometimes weeping woman?" I offered. He doesn't reply. "It's a ghost story."

Sam picks up from there. "Well, it's more of a phenomenon, really."

Both of us start walking back toward Joseph Welch. "Um, they're spirits, they've been sighted for hundreds of years."

"Dozens of places, in Hawaii, Mexico, lately Arizona, Indiana. All these are the different women." Sam stops right in front of Joseph, me on Sam's left.

"You understand, but all share the same story."

"I don't care much for nonsense." He starts to turn back but we're right behind him.

Sam continues talking, to Joseph's back. "See, when they were alive, their husbands were unfaithful to them."

That got his attention, he stops. "And these women, basically suffering from temporary insanity, murdered their children." He turns around at my words and faces us. "Then once they realized what they had done—"

"—They took their own lives. So now their spirits are cursed, walking back roads, waterways. And if they find an unfaithful man, they kill him."

"And the man is never seen again."

"You think…" he stops and pauses before beginning again. "You think that has something to do with…Constance, you smartasses?"

And we're in hostile territory, again. "You tell me." Sam stands a head taller and a great deal younger, but he issued the words calmly, staring straight into the guy's eyes.

Joseph got a panicked sound into his voice. "I mean, maybe…maybe I made some mistakes. But no matter what I did, Constance, she never would have killed her own children. Now get the hell out of here! And don't ever come back!" He's shaking as he speaks, whether from anger or grief it's impossible to tell. After a long moment he turns away. Sam sighs and we go back to the Impala.

I get out my phone. "Want me to make a distraction for Dean?"

Sam shrugs. "Sure, we're gonna need to get him out of their sometime." I called 911 and reported shots being fired at Whiteford Road, that should be a good enough distraction.

A few minutes after the call, my phone starts vibrating. It's Dean. "Fake 911 phone call? Annie, I don't know, that's pretty illegal."

"You're welcome." I couldn't help the grin that spread on my face.

Dean's voice became serious. "Listen we gotta talk."

"Tell me about it." Sam started to talk, telling me what to say to Dean but I just hit his arm and used my own words. "The husband _was_ unfaithful. We _are_ dealing with a woman in white. And she's buried behind her old house, so that should have been dad's next stop."

When Dean spoke again he sounded a bit annoyed. "Annie, will you shut up for a second?"

But I don't stop. "We just can't figure out why dad hasn't destroyed the corpse yet."

"Well that's what I'm trying to tell you. He's gone. Dad left Jericho." I repeated the words to Sam and then put the phone on speaker.

"What?" Sam said. "How do you know?"

"I've got his journal."

I scrunch up my eyebrows. "But he doesn't go anywhere without that thing. It's like his security blanket."

There was a snort on Dean's end of the phone. "Yeah, well, he did this time."

"What's it say?" Sam asked.

"Ah, the same old ex-Marine crap, when he wants to let us know where he's going."

Sam and I spoke at the same time. "Coordinates. Where to?"

I swear I heard him shake his head, he always thinks it's creepy when we do that, so when we were kids we would do it for as long as we could just to annoy him. "I'm not sure yet."

"I don't understand. I mean, what could be so important that dad would just skip out in the middle of a job? Dean, what the hell is going on?"

All of a sudden, Sam slams on the breaks and the phone flies out of my hands onto the floor. "What the fuck?!" I look up at Sam, he looks as though he's seen a ghost—or something out of the normal for us, I don't know. But I try to find the phone when I hear a voice in the back seat and jump.

It's Constance. "Take me home." Why is she here? "Take me home!"

"No." Sam said, she glares and slams me out of the car and onto the road, then locks the doors.

"Sammy!" I shout. It's of no use, I know, but I can't get in. The car drives away and I do the only thing I can do, run after it thinking _damn it, Sam_!

After what feels like miles I find the car parked in front of Constance's house and she's on top of him in the front seat. Again I shout Sam's name, but he can't hear me and I can't get inside. I'm trying to pry open the door—hell I'm even throwing rocks at the window. That's when I get out my gun and shoot her with the special bullets we've known how to make since we were kids, and somehow that's enough of a head start for Sam to be able to start the car and I back away from it. He starts to drive forward and I find Dean. "Dean! She's got him!" he curses before the two of us run after the car that is stuck in the house.

"Sam!" "Sam!" we both shout, Dean added "You okay?"

He groans an "I think" and we both relax.

"Can you move?" Dean asks.

"Yeah. Help me?" Dean leans through the window to give Sam a hand. Constance picks up a large framed photograph and Sam is out of the car.

Dean closes the car door and Constance glares at us, throwing the picture down she forces a bureau towards us, pinning us down the staircase. Great. The lights flicker; Constance looks around, scared as water begins to pour down the staircase. She goes over. There's a boy and girl at the top, they hold hands and speak in unison.

"You've come home to us, mommy." Now I can see why Dean finds it creepy when Sam and I do that. Constance looks at them, distraught, suddenly they are behind her; they embrace her and she screams, flickering. In a surge of energy, still screaming, Constance and the two children melt into a puddle in the floor.

We're able to push off the bureau and go to the spot where Constance and her children vanished.

"So this is where she drowned her kids." Dean stated.

Sam nodded. "That's why she could never go home. She was too scared to face them."

"You found her weak spot. Nice work, Sammy." I raised my eyebrows at him. "You too, Annie, that was a shot you took at her earlier."

My twin though, has a different opinion. "What were you thinking shooting Casper in the face?"

I slapped him on his chest where I know he'd been hurt by the ghost, he winced slightly. "Hey, I saved your ass."

Dean leans over to look at his car. "I'll tell you another thing. If you screw up my car?" He turns to look at Sam. "I'll kill you." Sam laughs.

Somehow we managed to get the Impala back on the road and Sam's in the back seat looking through dad's journal. "Okay, here's where dad went. It's called Blackwater Ridge, Colorado." Dean nods.

"Sounds charming. How far?"

"About six hundred miles."

Dean always the optimist said, "Hey, if we shag ass we could make it by morning."

I bite my lip. I didn't want to have this conversation. Sam hesitated answering. "Dean, I, um…" Dean just looks at the road and I look out my window.

"You're not going." I say softly.

"The interview's in like, ten hours. I gotta be there." Dean and I nod.

Dean looks at Sam through the mirror and then looks back at the road. "Yeah. Yeah, whatever. I'll take you home." We didn't talk for the rest of the ride.

* * *

**Apartment**

We pulled up to the apartment, Sam gets out and walks to my window, I roll it down. "Call me if you find him?"

Dean just nods, but I'm the one who talks. "'Course, Sam."

"Maybe I can meet up with you two later, huh?" Sam tries to make things better.

"Yeah, all right." Dean says. Sam starts to walk away. "Sam?" he turns back. "You know, us three,we made a hell of a team back there."

All Sam says is, "Yeah," before turning back to the apartment. We drive off, neither of us speaking a word. I look out behind us, it was just the same, then—

"Dean!" I shout. "Turn around! Go back!" he looks at me like I'm insane before he looks behind us and sees the smoke, he turned the car around so fast I thought we were going to flip over.

Both of us hop out of the car and start to go into the house when Dean shoves me back in the car and an order to "Stay where you are!" I start pacing, becoming anxious. When Dean comes back out he's dragging Sam out, Sam screaming for Jess…oh God…it couldn't have happened again. The apartment gets flooded with flames.

I run over to my brothers. "You okay?" he nods and mutters some more about Jess and the demon, but I just give him a quick hug before we go over to the Impala. Dean goes to see what's left of the apartment and what the cops are doing.

Sam and me are standing at the open trunk, he's loading a shotgun. Dean gets back and stares at Sam. He nods and tosses the gun back into the trunk. "We got work to do."

* * *

1: I left out the conversation but you can just watch the episode if you really want to know what they were talking about.

2: borrowing, really, I mean come on, you can't _really _ steal a name, just borrow it…somewhat permanently until they die.

3: as in he drove the car and then got out and walked down there not fell.


	2. Wendigo

**Chapter Three: Wendigo**

We're in the Impala and Sam's in the back, leaning against the window asleep. Dean has the radio on and singing to "Hot-blooded". We started playing the game 'cows' it's where when you see a cow you shout "cow!" we've lost score ages ago, but it's still fun to try and beat each other.

"COW!" I shouted, pointing out to the right of us. Dean cursed. "Ha!"

In the backseat Sam jerked awake. I look back there. "You okay?"

He rubs his eyes. "Yeah, I'm fine." I nodded and Dean shouts out "Cow!"

"Damn it!"

Chuckling Sam scoots over into the middle of the back of the car. "What are you two doing?"

Dean smirked at me and answered Sam. "I am currently beating Anne at Cows." To which I replied, "Are not!"

I turn back to Sam. "Another nightmare?" Sam's constantly having nightmares, I have too, but none that have really affected me, or at least not as bad as they're affecting him. Maybe I'm just having nightmares because he is. Sam won't talk about them but we—Dean and I—think they're about Jess, he mumbles her name in his sleep, calling out for her. He didn't answer me. "Sam, damn it, you can't lie to me, I'm your twin, I can tell that you're not sleeping. Hell _I'm_ not sleeping well, but if you don't talk we're going to end up driving Dean insane."

"I'm fine." He says, but he sounds everything but. Neither me nor Dean believed him and it must have shown on our faces because he spoke again. "Really, I'm fine."

"You want to drive?" Dean asked Sam.

The two of us looked at him like he sprouted a new head. "What?" we both asked. I just gawk at him while Sam laughed before talking again. "Dean, your whole life you never once asked me that."

"Just thought you might want to. Never mind." Dean has only let Sam and me drive the Impala if he's sick, MIA, but never, _ever_ when he is perfectly capable of driving it himself. He must be really worried.

Sam just sighed. "Look, man, you're worried about me. I get that, and thank you, but I'm perfectly okay." It took a lot of my willpower not to snort. He is anything _but_ okay. Dean just grunted. Sam grabs the map from in between Dean and me and studies it. "Where are we?"

"We're just outside of Grand Junction." I recited, while Sam was asleep I asked Dean the same question.

He folded the map down and set it to the side. "You know what? Maybe we shouldn't have left Standford so soon."

Here we go again. "Sam, we dug around there for a week. We came up with nothing. If you wanna find the thing that killed Jessica—"

Sam cut off Dean, sounding annoyed. "We gotta find dad first."

"Dad disappearing and this thing showing up again after twenty years, it's no coincidence." He's given this speech a few times now and I'm resisting the urge to turn up the radio and drown their voices out. "Dad will have answers. He'll know what to do." Of course, such faith in the man.

"It's weird, man." I rolled my eyes, I don't even know what he's specifically talking about, but almost everything we normally do is considered weird. "These coordinates he left us." Oh, yeah, that's weird. "This Blackwater Ridge."

I turned back, facing Sam. "What about it?"

"There's nothing there. It's just woods. Why is he sending us to the middle of nowhere?" Sam questioned.

"Why does dad do anything?" I spat out with a bit of venom in my voice.

Dean glared at me. "Don't you two start with that whole 'dad is so horrible' thing. It gets annoying after the billionth time." I shared a look with Sam before turning around, I stared out the window as we passed a sign that read: "Welcome to LOST CREEK COLORADO National Forest".

We parked in the ranger station and went inside, looking around waiting for some sort of person who works here. Sam's talking, but I'm barely paying any attention to him, I haven't been sleeping well and I'm paying for it now. I know Sam's having nightmares as well, this happened before to us. We had just barely started school and dad was out on a hunt nearby, Dean took us outside to play on Saturday and well, we came damn close to becoming whatever-it-was's meal, Dean ended up hacking it to death in front of us. After that neither of us slept for a week. Waking up at the same time screaming, having nightmares, but Dean got us through that. He would wake up and calm whoever woke up, and when we couldn't go back to sleep he would make us hot chocolate and let us watch cartoons. Even when we were on the road he'd find ways to cheer us up. Something's going on with Sam. The dreams—nightmares—are because of him.

I tune into Sam speaking, tired of my own thoughts. "So Blackwater Ridge is pretty remote. It's cut off by these canyons here, rough terrain, dense forest, abandoned silver and gold mines all over the place." Sounds lovely.

"Dude," Dean said. "Check out the size of this freaking bear."

Rolling my eyes at him I look, there's a framed photo of a man standing behind a much larger bear.

Sam stands next to Dean, looking at the picture and then continues on talking. "And a dozen or more grizzlies in the area. It's no nature hike, that's for sure."

"Well, thank you for your cheery description." My eyes didn't leave the picture but I can feel the look he's giving me.

"You three aren't planning on going out near Blackwater Ridge by any chance?" a voice behind us spoke, we whip around to face him, it's a ranger.

My twin, ever so elegant with words spoke for us. "Oh, no, sir, we're environmental study majors from UC Boulder, just working on a paper." He let out a small laugh.

Dean grins and raises a fist, "Recycle, man."

"Bull." My eyes fly to Dean who doesn't move. Of course something will happen and we'll end up in jail. "You're friends with that Haley girl, right?"

The three of us consider. "Yes, yes, we are, Ranger—" I looked for his nametag. "Wilkinson." I gave him a smile.

"Well I will tell you exactly what we told her. Her brother filled out a backcountry permit saying he wouldn't be back from Blackwater until the twenty-fourth, so it's not exactly a missing persons now, is it?" Dean shook his head. "You tell that girl to quit worrying. I'm sure her brother's just fine."

The eldest nodded. "We will. Well that Haley girl's quite a pistol, huh?" oh, great. I hope whatever he's doing works.

"That is putting it mildly."

"Actually you know what would help is if I could show her a copy of that backcountry permit. You know, so she could see her brother's return date." The ranger eyes Dean, who tries to put an 'I'm just trying to help' face on.

Somehow we end up with a copy of the permit and Dean has a bigger head than ever. He's laughing as we walk out of the station and into the outdoors. "What," Sam says, looking over at Dean. "Are you cruising for a hookup or something?"

Where did that come from? Dean's just as confused as I am. "What do you mean?"

"The coordinates points to Blackwater Ridge, so what are we waiting for? Let's just go find dad. I mean, why even talk to this girl?"

The three of us stop walking when we reach the car. "I don't know, maybe we should know what we're walking into before we actually walk into it?"

"Yeah, Sam," I looked him over. "We should know what we're dealing with, it could be anything. And since when are you all shoot first ask questions later?"

He opened the car door. "Since now."

I guess I'm riding in the backseat. "Really?" Dean asks as he gets into the driver's seat.

**Collins House**

A woman opened the door, the three of us were standing on the doorstep. There's a screen door in between us and the woman, more than likely Haley Collins, doesn't open it.

Dean, after checking her out, spoke. "You must be Haley Collins. I'm Dean, this is Sam," he guestered to our mammoth of a brother. "and Anne," he pointed to behind him where I stood between the two. "we're, ah, we're rangers with the Park Service. Ranger Wilkinson sent us over. He wanted us to ask a few questions about your brother Tommy."

She hesitates, deliberating whether or not to buy his story. "Lemme see some ID."

Smart girl. Dean pulls out his fake ID and holds it up against the screen, after looking at it she opens the door for us. "Come on in." Dean utters a thanks. "That yours?" I guess she saw the Impala.

"Yeah."

I'm looking back at the car when Haley comments. "Nice car." She turns and leads us into the kitchen where there's a guy sitting at the table on a laptop.

"So," I start. "If Tommy's not due back for a while, how do you know something's wrong?" She carries a bowl to the table with the guy and places it on the table.

"He checks in every day by cell. He emails, photos, stupid little videos—we haven't heard anything in over three days now."

Sam picked up from there. "Well, maybe he can't get cell reception."

A valid point. "He's got a satellite phone, too."

Dean chips in. "Could it be he's just having fun and forgot to check in?" he doesn't seem like the type to do that, or maybe he is, but I wouldn't and I hope that neither Sam nor Dean would.

"He wouldn't do that." The guy at the table speaks for the first time.

The three of us eye the guy at the table as Haley piles more food on to the table. Haley expands on his statement. "Our parents are gone. It's just my two brothers and me. We all keep pretty close tabs on each other." She glanced down at the guy—her brother—then back to the food on the table she's arranging.

"Can I see the pictures he sent you?" Sam asked. Haley confirmed that he could and went over to a laptop and pulled up some pictures.

"That's Tommy." There's a guy in a tent, smiling. She double clicks and another picture comes up, then a video, she plays it.

"Hey Haley, day six, we're still out near Blackwater Ridge. We're fine, keeping safe, so don't worry, okay? Talk to you tomorrow."

As he's talking there's a shadow that passes behind him. I glance over at Sam, he looks at me. We both saw it. Dean assures the two, "Well, we'll find your brother. We're heading out to Blackwater Ridge first thing."

"Then maybe I'll see you there. Look, I can't sit around here anymore. So I hired a guy. I'm heading out in the morning, and I'm gonna find Tommy myself." I like her, she's brave, but also gonna get herself killed.

"I think I know how you feel." Dean said.

Before I—or Sam—forget I ask, "Do you mind forwarding these to me?"

"Sure,"

**Bar**

We're at a bar and we sit down at a table. "So, Blackwater Ridge doesn't get a lot of traffic. Local campers, mostly. But still, this past April, two hikers went missing out there. They were never found." He opens dad's journal.

"Any before that?" Dean asked.

Sam pulls out newspaper articles and puts them on the table, we glanced at them while Sam talked. "Yeah, in 1982, eight different people all vanished in the same year authorities said it was a grizzly attack."

The headline read: Grizzly Bear Attacks! Up To Eight Hikers Vanish In Lost Creek Area Hikers Disappearance Baffle Authorities' it continued on, but that 'bout sums it up. My twin's pulling out his laptop, speaking, "And again in 1959 and again before that in 1936. Every twenty-three years, just like clockwork. Okay. Watch this. Here's a clincher. I downloaded that guy Tommy's video to the laptop. Check this out."

He plays it three frames of the video one at a time. The shadow we—Sam and I—saw the first time we saw the video crossed the screen.

Apparently this is the first time Dean saw it. "Do it again." Sam repeats the frames.

"That's three frames. That's a fraction of a second. Whatever that thing is, it can move." Dean leans over the table and hits Sam, he looks up.

"Told you something weird was going on." I roll my eyes at him.

Sam closes the laptop. "I got one more thing."

"What?" I ask, Sam hands us another newspaper article. He tells us what it's about. "In 'fifty-nine one camper survived this supposed grizzly attack. Just a kid. Barely crawled out of the woods alive."

He looked over at the other article. "Is there a name?" I skim the newspaper, not really reading the words.

**Shaw House**

We're led into the house by Mr Shaw. There's a cigarette hanging out of his mouth as he speaks. "Look ranger. I don't know why you're asking me about this. It's public record. I was a kid. My parents got mauled by a—"

"Grizzly?" I interrupt. "That's what attacked them?"

The old man takes out his cigarette and nods. Dean starts talking. "The other people that went missing that year, those bear attacks too?" There's a pause. "What about all the people that went missing this year? Same thing?" Another pause. "We knew what we were dealing with, we might be able to stop it."

"I seriously doubt that. Anyways, I don't see what difference it would make." He sits down before continuing. "You wouldn't believe me. Nobody ever did."

Sam sits down across from Mr Shaw, I follow, sitting next to him. "Mr Shaw, what did you see?"

The man pauses again. "Nothing. It moved too fast to see. It hid too well. I heard it, though. A roar. Like…no man or animal I ever heard." Well that sounds fantastic.

Sam and I shared a look; he asked Mr Shaw a question. "It came at night?" he nodded.

"Got inside your tent?" Instead of answering my question Mr Shaw went into story mode.

"It got inside our cabin. I was sleeping in front of the fireplace when it came in. It didn't smash a window or break the door. It unlocked it. Do you know of a bear that could do something like that? I didn't even wake up till I heard my parents screaming."

The giant opened his mouth again. "It killed them?"

Mr Shaw confirmed. "Dragged them off into the night." He shook his head. "Why it left me alive…been asking myself that ever since." Another round of silence rang through the room, Mr Shaw's hands went to his collar. "Did leave me this, though." He opened his collar to reveal three long scars. Claw marks. "There's something evil in those woods. It was some sort of a demon."

We thanked him and left shortly after, heading out. We walked down the corridor with rooms on either side of us.

"Spirits and demons don't have to unlock doors." Dean said. "If they want inside, they just go through the walls."

I'm walking right next to Dean, Sam ahead of us. "So it's probably something else—"

"Something corporeal." Sam finished my sentence, turning his head back to us.

"'Corporeal'? Excuse me, professor." Again, I roll my eyes at him.

The giant threw Dean a look. "Shut up. So what do you think?"

"The claws, the speed that it moves…could be a skinwalker, maybe a black dog. Whatever we're talking about, we're talking about a creature, and it's corporeal." I snickered, Dean ignored me and continued on talking, not glancing my way. "Which means we can kill it."

We walked out into the parking lot and Dean opens the trunk to the Impala and the weapons box. He props it open with a shotgun and tosses some guns in a duffel bag.

"We cannot let that Haley girl go out there." Sam leaned into the trunk, I stood off on Dean's other side, watching Dean pack the duffel.

The eldest didn't look up from the trunk. "Oh yeah? What are we gonna tell her? That she can't go into the woods because of a big scary monster?"

I laughed. "Yeah." Sam answered. Both Dean and I looked up at Sam.

"Her brother's missing, Sam." Dean reasoned. "She's not gonna just sit this out. Now we go with her, we protect her, and we keep our eyes peeled for our fuzzy predator friend." He lifted up the duffel bag.

"Finding dad's not enough?" Sam slams the weapons box shut, then the trunk. "Now we gotta babysit too?" I hid my gaze and focused on my shoes, they're a bit frayed and caked with mud. "What?"

I think I should get some new shoes. "Nothing." Maybe I can steal some from Target. When I look up Dean is throwing the bag at Sam and walks off. We made it inside a motel and got a room, again Dean got his own bed and Sam and I were to share one. I curled up against Sam's back and fell asleep.

I'm pulled out of a dream and thrust into consciousness. Another nightmare. I glance over my shoulder, both boys are still asleep. Ugh, pulling the blanket over my head I try to force myself back into sleep. No luck. Once I'm awake I can't go back to sleep, I might as well get up and make some coffee. Sam turned around, almost pushing me off the small bed. That's more motivation for me to get up.

Once I'm standing I go to the bathroom, brush my and manage to not wake either of . After I'm reasonably awake I start the coffee and open the fridge, stare aimlessly inside it before closing it and starting all over again. Eventually the coffee's done and I down almost the entire pot before Sam starts to stir.

"'Morning." I called out from the kitchen counter top. In return I got a grunt. The clock reads seven. Too early. Way too early for any human being to be up let alone for an hour before this. "Coffee?"

He nods his head and I gesture to the coffee maker where there's about a cup left in the pot. "Did you even sleep?" I ask him, noticing the bags under his eyes. Sam stands up and walks towards me.

"Yeah, loads, you?" smiling I roll my eyes and hop down from the counter to put my cup in the .

"From the look of you I'd say I got more sleep than you but less than Dean." I nodded my head towards Dean's lifeless form. That earned a chuckle from the tall one as he inhaled the rest of the coffee.

I made another pot and then went back over to the bed. In the drawers I found a sharpie and upcapped it, just about to draw on his face when Dean's hand reached out grabbed my wrist. "Shit." I whispered. He threw me back down onto the bed across from his.

"Grow up Annie." I glared at him and rubbed my wrist where he had grabbed it. "Do I smell coffee?"

Thirty minutes later we were heading up to the forest. We pulled up to where Haley, Ben and some guy were standing, at the edge of the forest. The three of us got out of the car, Sam with the duffel bag, and we walked up to them.

"You guys got room for three more?" Dean asked.

Haley stared at him. "Wait, you want to come with us?"

"Who are they?" The other guy looks confused, don't blame him one bit. He's completely out of the loop, especially since he thinks that there's nothing worse than a grizzle bear in these woods.

"Apparently this is all the park service could muster up for the search and rescue." Haley, ever the cheerful, responded.

Sam walks past everyone as the guy asks another question. "You're rangers?"

He doesn't have to sound so surprised. "That's right." I don't like this guy.

"And you're hiking out in biker boots and jeans?" Haley this time said.

Both of us look down at ourselves. Dean smirks at her. "Well, sweetheart, I don't do shorts." The two of us head past them, following Sam.

The strange guy calls out after us. "What, you think this is funny? It's dangerous back country out there. Her brother might be hurt." Sam turns back.

"Believe me, I know how dangerous it can be. We just wanna help them find their brother, that's all." We keep walking past the now still Sam.

All of us hike through the forest, Roy in the lead, then Dean, Haley, Ben, Sam and me in the back. "Roy, you said you did a little hunting." Dean says.

"Yeah, more than a little." A bit cocky.

"Uh-huh. What kind of furry critters do you hunt?" Dean, who is on Roy's heels, is about to start something with the idiot who thinks he can hunt whatever's taken Haley's brother.

The guy answers, "Mostly buck, sometimes bear."

My brother passes Roy. "Tell me, uh, Bambi or Yogi ever hunt you back?" Roy grabs Dean, I start to move forward, but Sam grabs my arm. I look up at Sam, he shakes his head, I yank my arm out of his grasp.

"Whatcha doing, Roy?" Roy grabs a stick and pokes the ground, I move forward for a closer look, it's a bear trap.

"You should watch where you're stepping. Ranger." He drops the stick and retakes the lead.

"It's a bear trap." Dean mutters as he keeps walking, Haley goes up to Dean and I fall back in step with Sam.

We're still in the back. Neither of us talk for a while, until Haley and Dean stop walking, he gives us a look and we pass them.

"Sam," I call out, hoping that my voice can reach his ears. "Did you bring any food?" The mammoth reached inside one of his pockets and brought out a Snickers bar, he broke it in two and handed me one half. "Thanks."

He finished his off before I had taken a second bite. "Dean took the rest of the snacks, but we should have something in the duffel, if not then…"

"We can roast Roy." Sam laughed and then ruffled my hair. "He may not taste as good as a nicer human, but he'll feed us at least."

The giant nudged me with his and I took a second to get my balance back while the mammoth laughed again. "Not fair!" I shouted up at him. "Your height gives you an unfair advantage!" I tried to shove him back but he ended up pushing me again.

There's more laughter from others now and I can feel a smile on my face, the smile doesn't stop me from throwing some sticks at Sam. "That's enough you two." Dean stood in the middle of us. "No complaining."

"But Dean—" Sam started.

"He pushed—"

"She—"

Dean whistled. "That's enough. Do you understand me?"

In unison we chorused, "Yes, sir."

Later we were still walking, Roy leading the way, Sam right behind him, Dean and me in the back. Roy calls out to us. "This is it. Blackwater Ridge." The mammoth heads past Roy.

"What coordinates are we at?" Sam asks, looking around at what's ahead.

Roy pulls out what I believe is a GPS. "Thirty-five and minus one-eleven." We, Dean and I, walk to Sam.

"You hear that?" I ask.

Sam nods. "Yeah. Not even crickets."

Putting away the GPS Roy says, "I'm gonna go take a look around."

Not a good idea. "You shouldn't go off by yourself." Sam says without looking back at him.

Roy smiles. "That's sweet. Don't worry about me." He waves his gun and pushes past us to retake the lead. Dean turns back to the others as Ben and Haley catch up.

"All right, everybody stays together. Let's go." Dean calls out, we follow.

**Campsite**

We finally made it to the campsite, the tents are torn open and bloody, all the supplies are scattered around.

Haley is only able to utter an "Oh my God," at the site.

"Looks like a grizzly." Roy 'helpfully' suggests.

We're all looking around for any sign that there's life here. "Tommy?" Haley calls out. She takes off her backpack and goes through the campsite. "Tommy!"

Sam goes up to Haley. "Shh."

"Tommy!" so much to listening to Sam who shushes her again. "Why?"

"Something might still be out there." Sam explains.

I keep looking around and Dean's doing them same when he yells out. "Anne, Sam!" We walk over to him, he's crouched on the ground. "The bodies were dragged from the campsite. But here, the tracks just vanish. That's weird." The three of us stand up. "I'll tell you what, that's no skinwalker or black dog."

We head back over to the campsite, Haley picks something up, Dean goes over next to her.

"Help! Help!" someone shouts, all of us jump into attention, Roy leads the way as we run to the aid of the shouter. "Help! Somebody!"

There's no one.

"It seemed like it was coming from around here, didn't it?" Haley asks as we all listen.

Sam barks out an order. "Everybody back to camp."

When we get back to the campsite all the supplies are missing. "Our packs!"

"So much for my GPS and my satellite phone." Roy sits down on the floor.

"What the hell is going on?" Haley demands. Wouldn't we all like to know?

It's a good thing that I know somewhat what's going on. "It's smart. It wants to cut us off so we can't call for help."

"You mean someone, some nutjob out there just stole all our gear." The three us ignore him and regroup.

"I need to speak with you. In private." We moved to the outskirts of the group. "Good. Let me see dad's journal." Dean hands him the journal and I marvel at how he could fit it in his jacket pocket. Sam flips through it until he finds a particular page. "All right, check that out." He points to a drawing of a figure.

"Oh come on, wendigos are in the Minnesota woods or, or northern Michigan. I've never heard of one this far west." That's a good argument Dean has, but a wendigo fits this perfectly. The voice imitation, the claws, it works.

"Think about it, Dean," I said. "The claws, the way it can mimic a human voice."

"Great." Dean takes out his pistol. "Well then this is useless." Sam gives Dean back dad's journal and starts to head back to camp.

Sam stops and turns back. "We gotta get these people to safety."

We headed back to the others at the campsite, Sam addresses the group. "All right, listen up, it's time to go. Things have gotten…more complicated."

"What?" Haley questions.

"Kid, don't worry. Whatever's out there, I think I can handle it."

I snorted at that and can't seem to stop myself from speaking. "It's not him or me I'm worried about. If you shoot this thing, you're just gonna make it mad. We have to leave. Now."

My words didn't get through to him. "One you're talking nonsense. Two, you're in no position to give anybody orders."

"Relax." Dean said, ever the peace keeper.

Sam sure didn't relax. "We never should have let you come out here in the first place, all right? I'm trying to protect you."

Roy steps right into Sam's space. "You protect me? I was hunting these woods when your mommy was still kissing you good night." I want to hurt him. I want to scream at him that our mom only got one-hundred-and-eighty-two-point-six-two-one days with us, and when he was hunting bunnies we were digging up graves and salt-and-burning them into oblivion. But I'm not going to.

"Yeah? It's a damn near perfect hunter. It's smarter than you, and it's gonna hunt you down and eat you alive unless we get your stupid sorry ass out of here." That's a good speech too.

Roy didn't think so though, he laughs. "You know you're crazy, right?"

"Yeah?" he likes to start his long rants with that word. "You ever hunt a wen—"

Dean pushes Sam so that he can't finish his sentence. "Roy!" Haley calls out, her and Dean are in between the mammoth and the idiot. Really I want Sam to beat the shit out of that moron.

"Chill out." Dean tried.

"Stop. Stop it. Everybody just stop. Look. Tommy might still be alive. And I'm not leaving here without him." Haley announced to us.

We calmed down, there's a pause, silence. Dean breaks it. "It's getting late. This thing is a good hunter in the day, but an unbelievable hunter at night. We'll never beat it, not in the dark. We need to settle in and protect ourselves."

"How?"

**CAMPSITE**

We've built a campfire and Dean's drawing an Anasazi symbol in the ground. I'm freezing, I'm helping set up protections and my jacket is not warm enough for this weather.

"One more time, that's—" Haley asks, she's poking the fire, sitting down in front of it with her brother, watching Dean.

He bent down again to draw another in the ground "Anasazi symbols. It's for protection. The wendigo can't cross over them." Roy laughs. "Nobody likes a skeptic, Roy." I finished and went over to Sam, who's sitting down at the edge of the campsite, the sound of footsteps behind me says that Dean is following me. I sat down next to Sam.

"You wanna tell me what's going on in that freaky head of yours?" Dean asked, as he sat down on the other side of Sam.

Sam didn't want to hear it, I'm trying to blend in with my surroundings. "Dean—"

"No, you're not fine. You're like a powder keg, man, it's not like you. I'm supposed to be the belligerent one, remember?"

Another silence. "Dad's not here. I mean, that much we know for sure, right? He would have left us a message, a sign, right?"

"Sam—" I started, but was interrupted by Dean. All I was going to do was just switch subjects, but if Dean wants to go in-depth with that, then, by all means let it be him who puts himself on the line.

"Yeah, you're probably right." Dean said. "Tell you the truth, I don't think dad's ever been to Lost Creek."

I knew that dad wasn't here, but to hear it being said out loud—I don't know, it's different. "Then let's get these people back to town and let's hit the road. Go find dad. I mean," Sam's on a roll now. "why are we still even here?"

"This is why." Dean moves in front of Sam, holding up dad's journal. "This book. This is dad's single most valuable possession—everything he knows about every evil thing is in here. And he's passed it on to us. I think he wants us to pick up where he left off. You know, saving people, hunting things. The family business."

Sam shakes his head. "That makes no sense. Why doesn't he just—call us? Why doesn't he—tell us what he wants, tell us where he is?" I shivered from a gust of wind and pushed myself against Sam, trying to steal his warmth. Without another word Sam takes off his jacket and puts it in my lap, I put it on over my jacket. I felt warmer almost instantly. I laid my head down on Sam's arm, starting to feel sleepy.

"I donno. But the way I see it, dad's giving us a job to do, and I intend to do it." He's always been a good little solider.

"Dean…" Sam started. "No. I gotta find dad. I gotta find Jessica's killer. It's the only thing I can think about." And there's Sam, set on one thing and nothing can change his mind.

"Okay, all right, Sam, we'll find them, I promise. Listen to me. You've gotta prepare yourself. I mean, this search could take a while, and all that anger, you can't keep it burning over the long haul. It's gonna kill you. You gatta have patience, man."

Sam looks down and up. "How do you do it? How does dad do it?"

The eldest glances over at Haley and Ben. "Well for one, them." Sam's head turned to them. "I mean, I figure our family's so screwed to hell, maybe we can help some others. Makes things a bit more bearable." They stopped talking. "I'll tell you what else helps. Killing as many evil sons of bitches as I possibly can."

A twig snaps and the wendigo shouts, "Help me! Please!" We stand us, Dean readies his gun. "Help!" Sam flashes the flashlight around.

"He's trying to draw us out. Just stay cool, stay put." Dean doesn't take his eyes off the woods.

"Inside the magic circle?" Roy mocks.

The wendigo keeps calling out to us. "Help! Help me!" it growled and Roy points his gun at the sound.

"Okay, that's no grizzly." No shit, Sherlock. Of course it's not a grizzly, it's a wendigo, we told you earlier.

Sam announces, "It's here."

Roy shoots at the rustling, nothing, then to his left it rustles again, he shoots over there twice. "I hit it!" he starts to go see what he hit.

"Roy, no! Roy!" Dean shouts at him, but he, of course, doesn't listen. He turns to Haley and Ben who are behind us. "Don't move." And we run after the idiot.

"It's over here! It's in the tree!" The wendigo reaches down from the tree and takes Roy. Dean shouts out his name one more time. He's dead, I didn't like him, but still. We head back to the others and the circle.

I sit down next to Sam by the fire as Dean tells Haley what happened to Roy. I don't know what happens after that, I fell asleep on Sam. I guess I didn't realize just how tired I really was. When I wake up again the sun is up and my head's on Sam's lap. He's holding dad's journal, I don't see Dean around.

"What time is it?" I ask, lifting my head up from my twin's lap. I'm still wearing his jacket, it's still warm.

Startled, Sam jumps a little. "I don't know, morning?" I give a little laugh as I stretch. "How'd you sleep?"

"Fine," I look around, trying to get the knot out of my neck. "Where's Dean?" I asked right before I spotted him, he's talking to Haley and Ben by the tents. "Come on," I say as I stand up. "Let's go." I pull his hair a bit as I walk over to Dean and Haley.

Haley's asking Dean a question. "How do you know about this stuff?"

He hesitates before answering. "Kind of runs in the family."

"Hey," Haley stands up at Sam's words. "So we've got half a chance in the day light. And I, for one, want to kill this evil son of a bitch."

"Well, hell, you know I'm in." Dean says.

Sam opens up dad's journal and shows it to Haley and Ben. The three of us take turns explaining. "'Wendigo' is a Cree Indian word."

"It means 'evil that devours'."

"They're hundreds of years old. Each one was once a man. Sometimes an Indian, or other times a frontiersman or a miner or hunter."

Haley asks a question, "How's a man turn into one of those things?"

"Well," I start "It's always the same. During some harsh winter a guy finds himself starving, cut off from supplies or help. Becomes a cannibal to survive, eating other members of his tribe or camp." Dean's picking things up off the ground as I explain.

"Like the Donner Party." Ben inputs.

Sam picks up. "Cultures all over the world believe that eating human flesh gives a person certain abilities. Speed, strength, immorality."

"If you eat enough of it, over years, you become this less than human thing. You're always hungry." Dean explains.

"So if that's true, how can Tommy still be alive?" Dean glances back at us, then back to Haley, I put my eyes down on the ground. I don't want to answer this question, I don't think that any of us want to answer it

Dean tried to warn her. "You're not gonna like it."

"Tell me."

Dean complies, "More than anything, a wendigo knows how to last long winters without food. It hibernates for years at a time, but when it's awake it keeps its victims alive. It, uh, it stores them, so it can feed whenever it wants. If your brother's alive, it's keeping him somewhere dark, hidden and safe. We gotta track it back there."

That went well. "And then how do we stop it?"

"Well, guns are useless, so are knives. Basically—" He holds up the can of lighter fluid, the beer bottle, and the white cloth he picked up. "We gotta torch the sucker."

* * *

The three of us are switching off on leading the group. "Sam, Dean." I call out, they catch up to me.

"What is it?" Dean asks.

I look around at the trees, they're bloody claw marks and broken branches everywhere. "You know, I was thinking, those claw prints, so clear and distinct. They were almost too easy to follow." There's growling and we whip around. The trees rustle.

Haley is standing under a tree. Blood drips on her shirt. She notices and looks up, then leaps out of the way; Roy's corpse lands where she was standing. Dean and I go over to Roy's body as Sam goes over to Haley.

"You okay? You got it?" he was asking Haley. I didn't hear her answer as I got to Roy's body.

I look at Roy, his neck's at an odd angle. "His neck's broken." Dean calls out. There's more growling from the wendigo. "Okay, run, run, run, run, go, go, go!"

Guess what we did? We ran.

I'm behind Dean and Haley, Ben tripped earlier and Sam and I stopped to help him up and in that time frame I lost sight of them. I'm right in front of Sam and Ben though. I stop running, Dean's Molotov cocktail, the bottle broken, is on the ground.

"Haley?" Ben calls out at the same time Sam and I shout "Dean!"

Ben, still a little shaken asks, "If it keeps its victims alive, why would it kill Roy?" Good question.

"Honestly? I think because Roy shot at it, pissed it off." Sam answers.

He doesn't answer. Ben bends down. "They went this way." I walk over to him, he's holding a peanut M&M. Ben hands the M&M over to Sam who tosses it.

Sam and I laugh. "It's better than breadcrumbs."

We follow the trail and it leads us to a mine entrance marked with a sign that says: WARNING! DO NOT ENTER EXTREMELY TOXIC MATERIAL. Sam and I make eye contact, he shrugs and goes inside, Ben and I follow. When Sam flashes the flashlight ahead of us so we can see, but the wendigo growls, and he turns it off. I grab Ben and push him up against the wall, it's coming towards us. I cover Ben's mouth with my hand before he can scream. The wendigo takes a different tunnel at the crossing and we keep walking.

The floorboards creak and next thing I know we're falling through the floor. Ow, I landed on something hard—bones. Ben sees them and leaps backward. "Hey, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay." I murmur to him.

Dean's hanging by his wrists from the ceiling, Haley's next to him, but I run to him, the Mammoth gets there before me. "Dean!"

Ben's at Haley's side. "Haley, wake up!" Sam shakes Dean.

"Dean!" his eyes open. "You okay?" I ask.

Dean winces before letting out a "Yeah."

"Haley, Haley, wake up, wake up!" Ben chants to her. Sam and I manage to cut Dean and Ben takes care of Haley. Sam leads Dean over to an empty patch of floor and Ben with Haley shortly after.

My brother makes pained noises. "You sure you're all right?" Sam asks.

He just grimaces. "Yeah, yep. Where is he?"

"He's gone for now." I'm sitting next to Dean. He's combing his fingers through my hair the way he used to when dad was late back from a hunt and trying to reassure me. Haley divests herself of rope. She stands up and spots Tom still hanging and starts crying.

"Tommy…" she touches Tom's check and his head jerks up. She's spooked and jumps back. "Cut him down!" she orders Sam, who gets up and does as she says. "We're gonna get you home."

Dean lets go of my hair and goes over to where the stolen supplies are piled in the corner. He picks up flare guns. "Check it out."

"Flare guns. Those'll work." Sam grins as Dean laughs and twirls the guns. I feel a smile on my face and wonder how it got there.

We head out. Down the tunnel, us three leading the way, with flare guns in hand, Haley and Ben supporting Tom.

The sound of growling fills the air. "Looks like someone's home for supper." Dean, of course, said.

"We'll never outrun it." Haley says.

He looks back at the others. "You two thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Yeah, I think so." I answer.

"All right, listen to me. Stay with Sam and Anne. They'll get you out of here." He orders.

I grab his arm. "No, I'm going with you." He starts to protest, but gives up before he even starts. Smart move.

"What are you two going to do?" Haley asks. Dean winks at her and we start walking and yelling.

"Chow time, you freaky bastard! Yeah that's right, bring it on, baby, I taste _good_." I roll my eyes at him and start calling out to the wendigo as well.

Dean's yellings are more interesting, he keeps saying things like, "Hey, you want some white meat, bitch! I'm right here!" The wendigo approaches, taking its time. We come up behind the Wendigo. "Hey!" Dean shouts at it, it turns and we shoot it with the flare guns, the wendigo catches fire.

"Not bad, huh?" I elbow him and Sam grins.

* * *

At the Ranger station an ambulance loads up Tom. Two police officers interviews Ben, Sam and I are standing behind him.

"And the bear came back again after you yelled at it?" The officer asked him.

"That's when it circled the campsite. I mean, this grizzly must have weighed eight hundred, nine hundred pounds."

Sam nods at his words. "All right, we'll go after it first thing."

Haley's talking to Dean, they're all ready patched up. When we're done talking to the police we walk over to them. Haley turns to Ben. "Let's go." Haley kisses Dean on the cheek. "I hope you find your father." They head off to the ambulance. "Thanks, Sam, Anne." They climb into the ambulance with Tom.

We go over to the Impala and sit on the hood. "Man, I hate camping."

"Me too." Sam and I say together.

"You know we're gonna find dad, right?" Dean asks to Sam.

"Yeah, I know. But in the meantime? I'm driving." Dean tosses Sam the keys. Damn it, that means that I'm in the back.

The three of us get off the hood and into the car, Sam driving, Dean in the passenger, me in the back. Dean fell asleep first, then me, I don't know how, but that makes me feel better. I think that I'm so tired because I'm sleeping for Sam and myself.

* * *

4: even though I'm going to drink coffee right after this.

5: though not due to my lack of trying.

6: which all ready has a small mountain of dishes in the small sink.

7: it was probably meant to be gentle, but it almost made me end up face first in the mud.


	3. Dead in the Water

**Chapter Five: Dead in the Water**

When I woke up the boys were talking. "What's going on?" I sit up and move to the middle and lean between them.

Dean pulled on a lock of my hair. "Not much. You were out for forever." I roll my eyes at him and place my head on his shoulder.

"And I could go for another nap. I am blaming Sam." I felt Sam's elbow hit my side. "It's your fault for not sleeping. If you had a normal sleeping pattern and no nightmares I would be fine." The eldest glanced over to Sam. Feeling an argument coming on I tried to change the subject. "Anyway, where to now?"

With a sigh Dean looks away from Sam. "Out of this state then start looking for a new job, we need some more money first." Sam answered looking away from the road to glance back at me.

We drove down to Texas, some city in the Panhandle. Halfway through the drive Dean took up driving and I went into the front, Dean said that he needed to get some sleep. I went inside the motel and checked us in, as Dean and the mammoth got our bags.

"Home sweet home." I mutter as I enter the room. There's a small couch and two beds, a little desk with a rolly chair, probably a bathroom the other door. "So, nap then get money?"

Dean threw his bag down and jumped on one of the beds. "Yeah, sounds good." A grin shows up on my face, I look over at Sam, who's getting out his computer, and the grin disappears. "Sam, you should sleep, you didn't sleep in the car."

He shook his head. "I'm not tired."

I roll my eyes at him. "Fine." I go over to the other bed and take off my shoes and remove my shirt, I have a tank on. Searching my duffel bag I finally find my shorts and change into them before falling onto the hotel bed. "Just don't complain when you finally drop from exhaustion." I can almost hear him roll his eyes.

Someone's shaking me awake. "Wha'?" I lift my head up. "Wha's goin' on?" I reach under my pillow and pull out my pistol.

Sam took the gun from me. "Dean told me to wake you up, he's going to get some money, I'm gonna order pizza, what do you want on it?"

Slowly I'm waking up. "Uh, nothing, I'll go with Dean. Where is he?"

A strange look's thrown at me. "He's in the bathroom. You sure?" instead of answering I walked over to the restroom and banged on the door.

"Dean!" there's a muffled 'what' is thrown at me. "I'm going with you so hurry up already."

Dean opened the door and steam rolled out of the room, only wearing a towel. "Can I get dressed?" he pushes past me and goes over to his duffel bag. "I thought you'd want to stay and sleep." Dean took out some clothes and walked back into the bathroom.

"Well I figure if I go with you I can find someone who'll buy me a few drinks." My older brother turns to me and has a horrified look. "What?"

He stopped walking and turned his full attention to me. "You are not going to hook up with some stranger—you're gonna stay with Sammy."

I groaned. "I won't hook up with anyone, I'm just gonna let them buy me a few drinks." Dean is glaring at me still. "Don't worry, Dean." I stand on the tips of my toes and place a kiss on his cheek. "I'll behave."

* * *

I'm not behaving.

As soon as we got to the bar I found a guy to buy me a bottle of whiskey and a quick shag in the girls bathroom. Darrin, the guy who bought my drink, zipped his pants up and gave me a once over before walking out of the bathroom.

After finishing my bottle of whiskey I ordered a beer and decided to go and find Dean. He said he was going to go play pool. As I walk up to him he looks over at me. "Hey Annie."

"Hey," Dean's playing against some guy. "How much have you made all ready?"

Smirking he turned away from the game. "I placed all of it on this game, double or nothing." He paused. "Where have you been?"

"Fucking some guy." A glare is sent my way. "Kidding, Dean, you know I like to bug you."

"Just started another round," Dean's attention went back to the game. Nodding I let him know that I'll be over at the bar.

I waited there until Dean came up to me smiling like he won the lottery. "What? How much did you win?"

Dean grinned and ordered another beer. "Enough to make five guys want to start a fight with me." I pushed my shoulder against his. "How much do I need to pay for the drinks?"

"Nothing, I've got it covered." I looked over at Darrin, he's looking at me, I wink at him. Dean doesn't miss it.

He looks over at the poor guy. "Did he—"

"No," I meet my brother's overprotective eyes. "He just paid for my drinks, no talking or anything."

"Good." After that we kept the conversation light, well, Dean did check and hit on multiple women but he—thankfully—didn't do much more than make out with them. Dean eventually gave the bartender some money and we went back to the Impala.

We're singing along to "Highway to Hell" and laughing as we hit the wrong notes and when we walk into the motel we're still singing and Sam throws a pillow at both of us.

"Sorry, Sammy." I apologized and sat down next to him. "Whatcha looking at?"

He turns the laptop towards me. "Looking for dad and some jobs."

I roll my eyes. "Just relax, Sammy. We'll find him, we found you." Sam just gave me a look.

"Go to sleep, Annie." I nodded and went to where Dean was laying on one of the beds and pushed him to make room for me.

"You get some sleep too, okay Sammy?" I didn't hear a response from Sam.

* * *

The next morning we went out to a restaurant, using the money that Dean won last night. We're mostly done eating, Dean is looking through obituaries in a newspaper and Sam and I are working on the crossword puzzle.

Our waitress comes back up to us. "Can I get you anything else?" She isn't talking to us, she's talking to Dean.

Dean looks up and grins around the pen he's chewing on, but Sam speaks first. "Just the check, please."

"Okay." She walks away.

The eldest drops his head then looks at Sam. "You know, Sam, I am allowed to have fun once in a while." He points to the waitress, who's walking away. "That's fun."

"Gross, Dean," I say, scrunching up my nose. "I'm right here."

He rolls his eyes at me and hands me the newspaper. "Here, take a look at this, I think I got one. Lake Manitoc, Wisconsin. Last week Sophie Carlton, eighteen, walks into the lake, doesn't walk out. Authorities dragged the water; nothing. Sophie Carlton is the third Lake Manitoc drowning this year. None of the other bodies were found either. They had a funeral two days ago."

"A funeral?" I asked.

"Yeah, it's weird, they buried an empty coffin. For, uh, closure or whatever." That made me raise my eyebrows, what closure can you get from an empty coffin?

Sam voiced my thoughts. "Closure? What closure? People don't just disappear, Dean. Other people just stop looking for them."

"Something you want to say to me?" Dean said.

Please don't say what I think you're gonna say. "The trail for dad. It's getting colder every day." I want to groan.

"Exactly. So what are we supposed to do?" A good point is flung to Sam by Dean.

"I don't know." Good answer Sammy, good answer. "Something. Anything."

Dean squares his jaw. "You know what? I'm sick of this attitude. You don't think Anne and I wanna find dad as much as you do?"

"Yeah, I know you do, it's just—"

The eldest interrupts him. "We're the ones that have been with him every single day for the past two years, while you've been off to college going to pep rallies. We will find dad, but until then, we're gonna kill everything bad between here and there. Okay?" Sam rolls his eyes, and the waitress walks by, stealing Dean's attention.

"All right. Lake Manitoc. Hey!" Dean snaps his attention back to Sam.

I roll my eyes now and share a look with Sam. "How far?"

* * *

We drove nonstop to Wisconsin and to the Carlton house. Dean even let me drive for a while, a shocker, I know, trust me I know. We get up to the door of the house and I knock on the door , a guy, presumably Will Carlton, opens the door.

"Will Carlton?" Dean asks.

"Yeah," he answers. "That's right."

Dean pulls out a badge, we do to. "I'm Agent Ford. This is Agent Hamill and Agent Kingston." He brings us to the lake, we can see his father sitting on a bench on the dock.

"She was about a hundred yards out." Will told us. "That's where she got dragged down."

"And you're sure she didn't just drown?" I ask, hate to make him think I doubt him, but, it's very plausible that she just drowned.

Will nodded. "Yeah. She was a varsity swimmer. She practically grew up in that lake. She was as safe out there as in her own bathtub."

My twin spoke for the first time. "So no splashing? No signs of distress?"

"That's what I'm telling you."

The guy's getting annoyed with us, I would too. "Did you see any shadows in the water? Maybe some dark shape breach the surface?"

Will turned to me to answer my question. "No. Again, she was really far out there."

"You ever see any strange tracks by the shoreline?" Dean questions him.

"No, never." He looks at the three of us. "Why? Why, what do you think's out there?"

Dean smiled at him. "We'll let you know as soon as we do."

We start to go back to the car when Sam asks Will another question, "What about your father?" the two of us stop and turn back to him. "Can we talk to him?"

Will looks back at his father, then back to us. "Look, if you don't mind, I mean…he didn't see anything and he's kind of been through a lot."

"We understand." I said, smiling at him. Before I turned around I notice his eyes drift down to my cleavage. Dean grabs my arm and turns me around, forcing me to walk with him back to the car. "You can let go of me now." We were at the Impala.

Still he didn't let me go. "Dean." I started to pry his fingers off of my arm and he let go of me. "Thanks."

Sam pushed ahead of me and got to the shotgun seat before me. Grumbling I got into the backseat and Dean drove off.

"Where are we going?" I ask, leaning in between them, resting my elbows on their seats.

The eldest turned to look at me. "The police station." Looking back at the road he spoke again. "Who are we gonna be?"

"Uh, since it has to do with nature," Sam said, looking around in the pile of fake badges. "I'm thinking Wildlife something or another." He handed out our badges.

We get to the police station and walk in, trying to look professional. The secretary barely looks are way, that is until Dean flirts with her while asking for the sheriff.

"Now, I'm sorry, but why does the Wildlife Service care about an accidental drowning?" He asked, his name is Jake Devins.

Sam raised his eyebrows. "You sure it's accidental? Will Carlton saw something grab his sister."

"Like what?" I asked him. We walk into Jake's office and he brings another chair to the others and motioning for us to sit down. "Here, sit, please. There are no indigenous carnivores in that lake." The three of us sit down. "There's nothing even big enough to pull down a person, unless it was the Loch Ness Monster."

"Yeah." He laughs. "Right." I share a look with Sam asking 'is he serious?' I only got an eye roll.

Jake sits down. "Will Carlton was traumatized, and sometimes the mind plays tricks. Still, we dragged that entire lake we even ran a sonar sweep, just to be sure, and there was nothing down there."

"That's weird, though," I said. "I mean, that's, that's the third missing body this year."

The sheriff got a look on his face. "I know. These are people from my town. These are people that I care about."

It's Dean's turn to say "I know."

"Anyway…" the sheriff sighs. "All this…it won't be a problem much longer."

"What do you mean?" Sam wonders.

His voice took a 'isn't it obvious' air. "Well, the dam, of course."

"Of course," Dean nods. "The dam, it's, uh, it sprung a leak."

Apparently that was exactly what needed to be said. "It's falling apart, and the feds won't give us the grant to repair it, so they've opened the spillway. In another six months, there won't be much of a lake. There won't be much of a town, either. But as Federal Wildlife, you already knew that."

"Exactly."

There's a tapping on the door. "Sorry, am I interrupting?" Sam and Dean stand, I stay sitting. "I can come back later."

"Lady, gentlemen, this is my daughter." Sheriff Jake introduces.

Dean shakes her hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm Dean."

"Andrea Barr. Hi." She holds Dean's gaze.

"Hi." I pull on Sam's sleeve and roll my eyes, he chuckles.

The sheriff interrupts them, thank God. "They're from the Wildlife Service. About the lake."

His daughter looked us over. "Oh."

A little boy walks in around Andrea. "Oh hey there. What's your name?" Dean asks him, but he walks away without speaking and Andrea follows.

"His name is Lucas."

We can see them in the main room, he's given some crayons. "Is he okay?" I turn to Sheriff Jake.

"My grandson's been through a lot. We all have." He gets up and stands by the office door. "Well, if there's anything else I can do for you, please let me know."

He escorts us out of the office and Dean turns to Andrea. "Thanks. You know, now that you mentioned it, could you point us in the direction of a reasonably priced motel?"

Andrea answers him. "Lakefront Motel. Go around the corner. It's about two blocks south."

"Two—would you mind showing us?" Andrea laughs

"You want me to walk you two blocks?" Please say no, please say no, please say no. I don't want to be kicked out of the motel, I just want to watch some tv.

Dean smiles at her. "Not if it's any trouble."

"I'm headed that way anyway." I groaned. She turns to Jake. "I'll be back to pick up Lucas at three." Then she talked to her son. "We'll go to the park, okay, sweetie?" Andrea kisses Lucas on the head.

As we're leaving Dean waves. "Thanks again." Sam calls back to the sheriff.

We let Dean and Andrea walk ahead of us, I hear Dean say "So, cute kid." And I snorted, changing the subject. "So, what do you think is behind this?"

Sam shrugged. "I don't know, when we get to the motel—if we're not kicked out for a while—I'm gonna do some research."

I snorted. "Yeah but there's a good chance that we're going to be kicked out. You know Dean, but at least we can go get ice cream while we wait." He ruffled my hair.

Dean's saying something like "Kids are the best" and I fight the urge to laugh at him.

"There it is. Like I said, two blocks." We're in front of a building labelled "Lakefront Motel".

"Thanks," Sam and I said.

She ignores us and addresses Dean. "Must be hard, with your sense of direction, never being able to find your way to a decent pickup line." She walks away, calling over her shoulder, "Enjoy your stay!"

I'm laughing, tears are gathering in my eyes. "'Kids are the best'? You don't even like kids."

"I love kids." He scoffed at us.

I raised my eyebrows. "Really? Name three kids that you even know." He doesn't answer.

With a shared look Sam and I walk into the motel. "I'm thinking!" Dean shouts at us from outside. We walk up to the receptionist and get a room. Once we get up to our room Sammy turns on his lap top, doing research and I flip on the tv. Dean's going through some of his clothes.

"So there's the three drowning victims this year." Sam announced reading from his laptop.

Dean responded without looking away from his clothes. "Any before that?"

"Uh, yeah." I scoot over to look at Sam's computer screen. It's open to _the Lake Manitoc Tribune._ DROWNING TAINTS ICE FISHING FESTIVAL. He clicks and another browser window comes up, again the _Tribune_: 12-YEAR-OLD GIRL DROWNS IN LAKE. Second drowning in 6 months at Lake Manitoc. "Six more spread out over the past thirty-five years. Those bodies were never recovered either. If there is something out there, it's picking up its pace."

Dean tosses some clothes onto a bed. "So, what, we got a lake monster on a binge?"

"Ooo, the Loch Ness Monster?" I grin. "Sounds like a fun case." Sam throws me his bitchface and I shrug. "What?"

He ignores me. "This whole lake monster theory, it, it just bugs me." Dean comes over and reads over Sam's other shoulder.

"Why?" I ask as Dean reads.

"Loch Ness, uh, Lake Champlain, there are literally hundreds of eyewitness accounts, but here, almost nothing." He looks at the _Tribune_ homepage. "Whatever it is out there, no one's living to talk about it."

He scrolls to the comments section of an article. I point to it. "Wait, Barr, Christopher Barr. Where have I heard that name before?"

Sam reads from the page. "Christopher Barr, the victim in May." He clicks a link, opening a new page. LOCAL MAN IN TRAGIC ACCIDENT. The picture's a police officer with Lucas. "Oh, Christopher Barr was Andrea's husband, Lucas's father. Apparently he took Lucas out swimming. Lucas was on a floating wooden platform when Chris drowned. Two hours before the kid got rescued. Maybe we have an eyewitness after all."

"No wonder that kid was so freaked out. Watching one of your parents die isn't something you just get over." Dean said. I looked over at him, but he just cleared his throat and looked away. He saw our mom, that night. Wonder how hard it hit him.

* * *

We went over to the park and found Andrea sitting on a bench watching Lucas colour and playing with toy soldiers.

"Can we join you?" Sam asks her.

She looks up at us. "I'm here with my son." Really?

Dean looks over at Lucas colouring. "Oh. Mind if I say hi?" he doesn't wait for an answer, just goes over to him.

"Tell your friend this whole _Jerry Maguire_ thing is not gonna work on me." We sit down next to her on the bench.

"I don't think that's what this is about." Sam says, I stare at Dean and Lucas, Dean's talking and Lucas is just drawing. Dean starts drawing too and I start to wonder what he's drawing. If he's still a crappy artist or if he can really draw.

Dean heads back to us, leaving the picture with Lucas. "Lucas hasn't said a word, not even to me. Not since his dad's accident."

"Yeah, we heard. Sorry." She nods.

"What are the doctors saying?" I ask her.

She stares at her son while answering. "That it's a kind of post-traumatic stress."

Sam empathises with her. "That can't be easy. For either of you."

"We moved in with my dad. He helps out a lot. It's just…when I think about what Lucas went through, what he saw…" she pauses.

"Kids are strong. You'd be surprised what they can deal with." Dean says.

Before we say anything else Lucas runs up to us. "You know, he used to have such life. He was hard to keep up with, to tell you the truth. Now he just sits there. Drawing those pictures, playing with those army men. I just wish—" She gets cut off by Lucas who walks up to us, carrying a picture. "Hey sweetie."

He hands Dean the picture without a word. "Thanks. Thank, Lucas." He heads back to the bench. We leave them and head back to the motel.

Sam goes out to do some more research and Dean and I stay there, watching some tv. After a few episodes of the sitcom we're watching are done Sam walks back into the room.

"So, I think it's safe to say we can rule out Nessie." He announces to us.

Dean turns towards him. "What do you mean?"

Sam sits next to us on the couch. "I just drove past the Carlton house. There was an ambulance there. Will Carlton is dead."

"He drowned?" I ask.

"Yep. In the sink." Now he has our undivided attention.

Shame, I kind of wanted it to be Nessie. "What the hell? So you're right, this isn't a creature. We're dealing with something else."

"Yeah, but what?"

Dean shrugs. "I don't know. Water wraith, maybe? Some kind of demon? I mean, something that controls water…water that comes from the same source."

My head snaps up. "The lake."

"Yeah."

Sam continues on with the idea. "Which would explain why it's upping the body count. The lake is draining. It'll be dry in a few months. Whatever this thing is, whatever it wants it's running out of time."

"And if it can get through the pipes, it can get to anyone, almost anywhere." Dean stands up. "This is gonna happen again soon." He goes and sits down on a chair.

"And," I started, glancing at the two of them. "We do know one other thing for sure. We know this _has_ got something to do with Bill Carlton."

Dean agrees with me. "Yeah, it took both his kids."

"And I've been asking around. Lucas's dad, Chris—Bill Carlton's godson."

"Let's go pay Mr Carlton a visit."

* * *

Dean drove us back over to where we saw Bill Carlton the first day, out on the bench on the dock. Sam calls out to him, "Mr Carlton?" he looks up as we approach. "We'd like to ask you a few questions, if you don't mind."

"We're from the, the Department—" Dean is cut off by Mr Carlton.

"I don't care who you're with. I've answered enough questions today." He says, not really all there.

Sam tries to coax something out of him, "Your son said he saw something in that lake. What about you? You ever see anything out there? Mr Carlton, Sophie's drowning and Will's death—we think there might be a connection to you or your family."

The straight forward approach, doesn't always work. "My children are gone. It's…it's worse than dying. Go away. Please."

And we do. We go back to the Impala. "What do you think?" I ask them.

"Aw, I think the poor guy's been through hell. I also think he's not telling us something."

We're leaning against the car as Sam speaks again. "So now what?" Dean goes still. "What is it?"

"Huh." He's looking back at the house. I look as well. "Maybe Bill's not the only one who knows something." He pulls out the picture Lucas brought him earlier, it's of the Carlton house.

* * *

"I'm sorry, but I don't think it's a good idea." Andrea tells us, we asked to see her son, talk to him about what he drew. She's a bit hesitant at it, though.

"I just need to talk to him." Dean says, we're in her house and trying to convince her. "Just for a few minutes."

She thinks about it for a second then responds. "He won't say anything. What good's it gonna do?"

"Andrea," I say. "We think more people might get hurt. We think something's happening out there."

"My husband, the others, they just drowned. That's all." Denial.

Dean manages to convince her. "If that's what you really believe, then we'll go. But if you think there's even a _possibility_ that something else could be going on here, please let me talk to your son."

Lucas is colouring, he still has the toy soldiers standing around him. All of us approach the doorway but only Dean enters the room.

He crouches down by Lucas. "Hey, Lucas, you remember me?" He has two drawings of a red bicycle. "You know, I, uh, I wanted to thank you for that last drawing. But the thing is, I need your help again." Lucas is drawing a person in water. Dean lays the picture Lucas gave him earlier and puts it down in front of him.

"How did you know to draw this?" He continues. "Did you know something bad was gonna happen? Maybe you could nod yes or no for me." Lucas doesn't answer, just keeps colouring. "You're scared. It's okay. I understand. See, when I was your age, I saw something real bad happen to my mom," I share a look with Sam before making my face blank. "And I was scared, too. I didn't feel like talking, just like you. But see, my mom—I know she wanted me to be brave. I think about that every day. And I do my best to be brave. And maybe, your dad wants you to be brave too." Oh, Dean, how long have you held onto this one?

Lucas drops his crayon and looks up at Dean. He hands Dean a picture. "Thanks, Lucas."

The three of us left the house after that. I'm back in the front with Dean, Sam in the back. The picture Lucas gave Dean is a drawing of a building with a little boy in front of it.

"Andrea said the kid never drew like that till his dad died." Dean told us.

As I look at the paper the words tumble out of my mouth. "There are cases—going through a traumatic experience could make people more sensitive to premonitions, psychic tendencies."

"Whatever's out there, what if Lucas is tapping into it somehow?" Dean says. "I mean, it's only a matter of time before somebody else drowns, so if you got a better lead, please."

I handed the picture to Sam. "All right, we got another house to find." He said as he looks the picture over.

Dean turned to look at Sam. "The only problem is there's about a thousand yellow two-stories in this county alone."

My twin looks over the picture again. "See this church? I bet there's less than a thousand of those around here."

The eldest cast a glance at me. "Oh, College Boy thinks he's so smart." I snorted.

"You know, um…" Sam started to say. "What you said about mom…you never told us that before."

Dean doesn't look at us. "It's no big deal. Oh God, we're not gonna have to hug or anything are we?"

I punch his shoulder. "We just—" Dean threw a hand over my mouth. "No chick flick moments." He smirked at me.

* * *

Sam managed to find out where the church is and Dean drove us there. Currently Dean's comparing the drawing Lucas made him to the church before him. There's a yellow house next to the church and a wooden fence near the house.

"Well," I say, looking to the house. "I guess now we go see if the boy's there."

Together we walk to the house and Dean knocks on the door. An old lady opens up and Dean gets her to let us in the house so we can talk to her. "We're sorry to bother you ma'am, but does a little boy live here, by chance? He might wear a blue ball cap, has a red bicycle."

"No sir. Not for a very long time. Peter's been gone for thirty-five years now." She answers, she glances over at a picture on the side table and sighs. "The police never—_I _never had any idea what happened. He just disappeared." Sam nudges me and Dean then points out a number of toy soldiers on a table. "Losing him—you know, it's…it's worse than dying."

Dean looks at both of us before asking, "Did he disappear from here? I mean, from this house?"

"He was supposed to ride his bike straight home after school, and he never showed up." I walk over to the mirror and pick a picture up. There's two boys in the picture, one with a bicycle. On the back is "Peter Sweeney and Billy Carlton, nineteen seventy."

We leave the woman and go back to the Impala. "Okay," Sam's speaking. "This little boy Peter Sweeney vanishes, and this is all connected to Bill Carlton somehow."

"Yeah, Bill sure as hell seems to be hiding something, huh?" Dean pipes in.

"And Bill, the people he loves, they're all getting punished." I said, leaning in between them from the backseat.

Dean keeps his eyes on the road. "So what if Bill did something to Peter?"

Sam glances at the two of us. "What if Bill killed him?"

"Peter's spirit would be furious." I said.

"It'd want revenge. It's possible." Sam finished.

We pulled up into Bill Carlton's house and called out to him. "Mr Carlton?" no answer. An engine roars. The three of us go around the house to see Bill going out on the lake in his boat.

"Hey check it out." Dean says and we run to the end of the dock, yelling. "Mr Carlton! You need to come back! Come out of the water! Turn the boat around!" He ignores us and keeps going. The water rises up and flips Bill's boat over and they vanish.

"Damn it."

* * *

We walk into the police station with sheriff Jake right behind us. Andrea and Lucas are there. "Sam, Anne, Dean." She stands up, putting the bag and container on her chair. "I didn't expect to see you here."

"So now you're on a first-name basis. What are you doing here?" The sheriff asks his daughter.

She gestures to the bag and container. "I brought you dinner."

Sheriff Jake looks at the food before telling her, "I'm sorry, sweetheart, I don't really have the time."

"I heard about Bill Carlton. Is it true? Is something going on with the lake?" Of course news has all ready spread, I'd be surprised if they hadn't yet. It's not a very big town and news spreads fast in small towns.

"Right now we don't know what the truth is. But I think it might be better if you and Lucas went on home."

Lucas looks up and whines, looking stricken; he jumps up and grabs Dean's arm. "Lucas, hey, what is it?" he doesn't speak "Lucas."

"Lucas." Andrea tries.

"Lucas, it's okay. It's okay. Hey, Lucas, it's okay. It's okay." Andrea pulls Lucas away from Dean and leads him outside. Lucas doesn't look away from Dean.

Jake throws down his jacket and goes into his office, we follow him in. "Okay, just so I'm clear, you see…something attacks Bill's boat, sending Bill—who is a very good swimmer, by the way—into the drink, and you never see him again?"

Dean glances at us. "Yeah, that about sums it up."

"And I'm supposed to believe this, even though I've already sonar-swept that entire lake? And what you're describing is impossible? And you're not really Wildlife Service?" We must look surprised because he said, "That's right, I checked. Department's never heard of you three."

"See, now, we can explain that."

Jake stops him before he can say any more. "Enough. Please. The only reason you're breathing free air is one of Bill's neighbours saw him steering out that boat just before you did. So, we have a couple of options here. I can arrest you for impersonating government officials and hold you as material witnesses to Bill Carlton's disappearance. Or, we can chalk this all up to a bad day, you get into your car, you put this town in your rear-view mirror, and you don't ever darken my doorstep again."

"Door number two sounds good." Sam said.

"That's the one I'd pick."

Walking out of the sheriff's office we got into the Impala. "Are we just gonna leave?" I ask.

Dean sighs. "Yeah, we're just gonna leave. Got no other choice." The job's done, but, I just, don't know. It feels _wrong_ to just leave now, we should at least say goodbye to Andrea and Lucas. "I don't know about you but I don't feel like breaking out of jail today."

He smirks at me as we get into the Impala.

We pull up to a traffic light, right before we can get on the interstate, the light turns green and the Impala doesn't move. "Green." I say, poking Dean on the shoulder. It's a habit I picked up as a kid and kept it because it bothers Dean so much.

"What?" He asks, looking as if he just awoke from a day dream. Which I hope is not the case, God no, we'd all die, even the people at home sleeping. I don't know what goes on in Dean's head but even in his good dreams he probably massacres a village of some sort of monster.

Sam answered his question. "Light's green." Dean turns right. "Uh, the interstate's the other way."

"I know."

"But Dean," I say. "This job, I think it's over."

He keeps driving back. "I'm not so sure." I'm kind of scared that Sam isn't driving or me, but then again, Dean would probably _make_ us turn around with force. That isn't fun, trust me, he may be more gentle with me than Sam, but it still hurts.

"If Bill murdered Peter Sweeney and Peter's spirit got its revenge, case closed. The spirit should be at rest." Sam tries to reason with him. I agree, the job is done.

Dean tries to use logic on Sam, something that I never thought would happen. "All right, so what if we take off and this thing isn't done? You know, what if we've missed something? What if more people get hurt?" appealing to pathos now, always works with Sam.

I sat back, sitting properly. "But why would you think that?" Sometimes I just can't stay out of arguments or disputes.

"Because Lucas was really scared." Is his answer. That's it. Something I never thought would happen.

"That's what this is about?" Sam asks turning to face Dean.

Dean glances Sam's way for a second then back to the road ahead of us. "I just don't want to leave this town until I know the kid's okay."

"Who are you? And what have you done with my brother?" I roll my eyes at Sam's comment.

The eldest gives Sam a look. "Shut up." And a great closing argument from Dean. That one really stung Sam.

When we get to Andrea's place Dean is the first one out the door and rings the doorbell. Lucas opens the door, he looks terrified. "Lucas? Lucas!" Dean calls, but Lucas just takes off and we follow him in. Water is pouring out from under the bathroom door and down the stairs. Lucas starts pounding on the bathroom door. Dean pushes him to me and I bend down, holding him close to me. Dean kicks the door in and he and Sam try to pull Andrea out of the tub.

"Shh, it's okay." I murmur to Lucas, he's stopped trying to go over to his mom and instead buried himself in my torso. "Your mom's gonna be all right. Shh." I start to rub circles on Lucas's back, that's what Dean used to do when I was upset. It works, he starts to calm down and when I hear Andrea coughing up water and I let Lucas go. He runs in there to his mom. I get a towel and lay it on her as she catches her breath. Once she's able to stand she goes to her room and gets dressed.

Once she's dried off we go down to the living room. "Can you tell me?" Sam asks her. The three of us are sitting on the couch and Dean is looking around the room.

"No. It doesn't make any sense." She starts crying. "I'm going crazy."

Andrea puts her face in her hands. "No, you're not. Tell me what happened. Everything." I say as gently as I can.

"I heard…I thought I heard…there was this voice." She finally gets out.

Sam leans forward. "What did it say?"

"It said." She pauses. "It said 'come play with me'." Andrea starts sobbing. "What's happening?" what indeed. If I even knew half of what's ever going on in my life I don't know what I'd do. The biggest question is why my mom died on the ceiling. But the answer will probably kill me. So I'll do what I've always done, follow Dean, do what Dean says to do. That's the only thing that will keep me alive.

Dean comes up to us and puts a book down in front of Andrea, open to a picture of "Explorer Troop 37". "Do you recognize the kids in these pictures?"

"What?" she blanks, then looks at the pictures. "Um, um, no. I mean, except that's my dad right there. He must have been about twelve in these pictures."

She moves her finger over to another picture of Jake as a child; he is standing next to Peter. "Chris Barr's drowning. The connection wasn't to Bill Carlton. It must have been to the sheriff."

It clicked in my head the moment Dean said that. "Bill _and _the sheriff—they were both involved with Peter."

"What about Chris? My dad—what are you talking about?" None of us answer her.

Dean looks sideways. "Lucas?" he's staring out the window. "Lucas, what is it?" Lucas opens the door and walks outside. All of us follow.

"Lucas, honey?" Andrea calls out to him.

Lucas stops and looks at the ground, then at Dean. "You and Lucas get back to the house and stay there, okay? Annie, you go with them." Dean orders us.

I want to argue, but I figure that this once he's right, Andrea is in no state to be left alone. I nod and wait as Andrea gathers Lucas. We start walking back to the house.

"What's going on?" She asks me a small voice.

I try to look away from her, I hate answering these types of questions. "Your father and Bill Carlton did _something_ to Peter Sweeney, more than likely killed him and his spirit is trying to get revenge." Andrea gave me a look that conveyed just exactly how crazy I am.

Knew I should've lied. "How—how can you know that? Spirits and murder, that's—"

"Crazy talk," I finished for her. "Yeah, we get that a lot. But, you know what you heard back there in the bathroom," I paused, she was looking at Lucas. "You're not insane, none of us are, we're gonna fix this. Put the spirit to rest so that you and Lucas will be fine."

Andrea nodded. We make it up to the house and the two of us look out the window and see the sheriff with a gun aimed at my brothers. "Take Lucas and go to your room." I order her.

She shakes her head. "No, I'm going with you, I can talk some sense into him." Can't argue with that point. Andrea turns to her son. "Go to your room, sweetie. Now. Lock the door and wait for me. Don't come out." He runs off and the two of us go outside, running to them.

We run all the way to where they are and Andrea shouts out, "Dad!"

"And now you got one seriously pissed-off spirit." Dean's saying.

Sam continues where Dean left off. "It's gonna take Andrea, Lucas, everyone you love. It's gonna drown them. And it's gonna drag their bodies God knows where, so you can feel the same pain Peter's mom felt. And then, after that, it's gonna take you, and it's not gonna stop until it does."

"Yeah, and how do you know that?" the sheriff asks.

"Because that's exactly what it did to Bill Carlton." I said, sheriff Jake pointed the gun at me now.

He looked at all of us. "Listen to yourselves, you're insane."

"I don't really give a rat's ass what you think of us. But if we're gonna bring down this spirit, we need to find the remains, salt them, and burn them into dust. Now tell me you buried Peter somewhere. Tell me you didn't just let him go in the lake."

Andrea looked at her dad. "Dad, is any of this true?"

Sheriff doesn't look away from Sam and Dean. "No. don't listen to them. They're liars and they're dangerous."

"Something tried to drown me. Chris died on that lake. Dad, look at me." The sheriff looks over at her. "Tell me you—you didn't kill anyone." He looks away. "Oh my God."

He tries to explain. "Billy and I were at the lake. Peter was the smallest one. We always bullied him, but this time, it got rough. We were holding his head under the water. We didn't mean to. But we held him under too long and he drowned. We let the body go, and it sank. Oh, Andrea, we were kids. We were so scared. It was a mistake. But, Andrea, to say that I have anything to do with these drownings, with Chris, because of some ghost? It's not rational."

"All right listen to me, all of you. We need to get you away from this lake, as far as we can, right now."

Andrea gasps. "Lucas!" Jake shouts. He's outside, standing at the lake. We run up the dock, Lucas is leaning over the side, reaching for something in the water.

"Lucas!"

"Lucas, baby, stay where you are!"

A hand comes up and yanks Lucas into the water by the time we get to the edge of the lake. Dean and Sam dive into the water and I stay back. Andrea starts to take off her jacket and Sam shouts "Andrea, stay there!" I pull her back.

She shoves me away. "No! Lucas!"

"They'll get him," I tell her as I pull her back even more. "He wants _you_ not them, they'll get Lucas back."

My attention is so focused on Sam and Dean that I barely hear sheriff Jake speaking. "Peter, if you can hear me…please, Peter. I'm sorry. I'm so—I'm so sorry."

Again I have to hold Andrea back as she tries to get to her father. "Daddy, no!"

"Peter. Lucas—he's, he's just a little boy. Please, it's not his fault, it's mine. Please take me." Dean and Sam come up for air, Dean shouts at him to stop when Peter surfaces. "Just let it be over!" he's dragged down and Andrea is screaming.

Sam comes up shaking his head. My heart stops.

Dean comes up, holding Lucas, he's not moving.

I let go of her and help Dean pull the boy up here. He's breathing.

* * *

We pack up and throw our bags in the Impala. "Look, we're not gonna save everybody." Sam's telling Dean.

"I know."

Andrea walks up to us with Lucas. "Sam, Anne, Dean."

"Hey." Dean greets them.

"We're glad we caught you. We just, um, we made you lunch for the road." She said, Lucas is carrying a tray of sandwiches. "Lucas insisted on making the sandwiches himself.

He looks up at his mom. "Can I give it to them now?"

Smiling she answers, "Of course." She kisses his forhead.

"Come on, Lucas," Dean says. "Let's load this into the car."

As Dean leads the boy to the car door Sam starts to make conversation with Andrea. "How you holding up?"

"It's just gonna take a long time to sort through everything, you know?" Yeah, we know. We never got the time, but we've seen people.

Sam sighs. "Andrea, I'm sorry." She shakes her head.

"You saved my son. I can't ask for more than that. Dad loved me. He loved Lucas. No matter what he did, I just have to hold onto that." Yeah, that sounds like a good plan.

I can hear Dean teaching Lucas a new rule. "All right, if you're gonna be talking now, this is a very important phrase, so I want you to repeat it one more time."

"Zeppelin rules!"

"That's right. Up high." I roll my eyes at my brother. "You take care of your mom, okay?"

"All right."

Andrea leaves us and goes over to Dean and kisses him. "Thank you."

Dean goes around the car. "Sam, Anne, move your twin asses. We're gonna run out of daylight before we hit the road." I shove Sam and take the shotgun seat. "Movin' On" starts to play when Dean turns on the engine. Andrea and Lucas wave goodbye to us.

"Where are we going now?" I ask Dean.

He glances at me before answering. "I don't know, but first, Sam, pass me a sandwich." I laugh as Dean shoves the entire sandwich in his mouth.

"Don't you go choking on that," I say, eating my own sandwich. "'Cause I sure as hell ain't gonna give you mouth to mouth." That earned me a punch on my shoulder. "I'm just sayin'."

Taking a drink out of his water bottle Dean manages to swallow all of the sandwich. "So, in Utah there's a ghost haunting the house of a family friend. The Johnsons, I worked a job for their cousins or something and they called, wondering if we could help."

"Cool," I said. "As long as there's homemade food or any food really, I'm in." Grinning I look back at Sammy. "What say you?"

I can _feel_ Sam rolling his eyes. "We need to find dad."

"No," I say and turn to face him. "We _will_ find dad, but until then we'll do what we always do, hunt, save people."

He glares at me, but I hold his gaze. "Fine, I'm in." he pauses. "But—"

"We know, but we should be looking for dad." Dean says. "We will, Sammy, we will."


	4. Phantom Traveler

**Chapter Seven: The Phantom Traveller**

The door to our motel room opens, waking me up and I slip my hand under my pillow, bringing out the gun I have, and pointing it at the door. It's just Sam, I look at Dean, he's putting his gun away too. Sam's carrying coffee and pastries.

"Morning, sunshines." Sam calls out as he puts down the coffee and food on a table.

I fall back down onto the bed, face first. "What time is it?"

"Uh, it's about five forty-five." I groan. It's inhumane to be awake this early. God, it's too early to think, how can that mammoth function this early?

Dean's as upset as I am. "In the morning?"

"Yep."

"Where does the day go?" I hear Dean say. "Did you get any sleep last night?"

I start to sit up, taking my time as Sam answers. "Yeah, I grabbed a couple hours." Now I'm sitting up leaning on the wall behind me.

Dean calls him out on his lie. "Liar. 'Cause I was up at three and you were watching a George Foreman infomercial."

"Hey, what can I say? It's riveting tv." I roll my eyes at him.

"I don't know, a little while, I guess. It's not a big deal." 'Not a big deal'? the human body can only go so long without sleep before it crashes.

Dean agrees with me again. "Yeah, it is."

"Look, I appreciate your concern—"

The eldest interrupts him. "Oh, I'm not concerned about you. It's your job to keep my ass alive, so I need you sharp." Sam shrugs and I hold back a snort. "Seriously, are you still having nightmares about Jess?"

"I can answer that for you." The two of them look over at me. "Yes he is. They're so bad they leak into _my_ dreams."

Sam throws me an annoyed look, he comes over and sits on the corner of my bed, handing both of us a coffee, which we take. I hold mine up to my nose and breathe it in. "Yeah. But it's not just her. It's everything. I just forgot, you know? This job. Man, it gets to you."

"You can't let it. You can't bring it home like that." Dean lectures him.

He gives our brother a look. "So, what? All this it…never keeps you up at night?" Sam looks back and forth between the two of us, I don't meet his gaze. Dean on the other hand shakes his head. "Never? You're never afraid?"

"No, not really." Sam reaches under Dean's pillow and pulls out a large hunting knife and holds it up as evidence.

Dean grabs the knife back. "That's not fear. That is precaution."

"All right, whatever. I'm too tired to argue." Dean's phone rings and he picks it up, talking to it.

I turn to Sam. "Maybe you should at least lay down for a while and try to sleep." He shakes his head.

"No, I'm fine." I keep an eye on him. "Seriously, you don't have to keep watching me like I'm gonna pass out any moment."

Dean's saying, "Oh, right, yeah. Up in Kittanning, Pennsylvania, the poltergeist thing. It's not back, is it?" He pauses. "What is it?" Dean looks back at us before speaking again. "Yeah, yeah, sure. Where?"

He hangs up the phone and starts packing. "Let's go, we're going to Pennsylvania."

* * *

**Pennsylvania**

"Thanks for making the trip so quick." Jerry's telling us. "I ought to be doing you guys a favour, not the other way around. Dean, Anne, and your dad really helped me out." He tells Sam.

"Yeah, he told me." Sam says. "It was a poltergeist?"

Some stranger spoke. "_Poltergeist_? Man, I loved that movie."

"Hey, nobody's talking to you. Keep walking." The guy walks away. "Damn right it was a poltergeist, practically tore our house apart. Tell you something, if it wasn't for you two and your dad, I probably wouldn't be alive. Your dad said you were off at college. Is that right?"

Sam nods. "Yeah, I was. I'm—taking some time off."

"Well, he was real proud of you. I could tell. He talked about you all the time." I wish it wasn't true, but it is. After giving Sam such a hard time about going to college and then bragged about him when he was gone.

My brother stares at him. "He did?"

Jerry confirmed. "Yeah, you bet he did. Oh, hey, you know I tried to get a hold of him, but I couldn't. how's he doing, anyway?"

"He's, um, wrapped up in a job right now." I lie, glancing at my brothers.

"Well, we're missing the old man, but we get Sam. Even trade, huh?" Jerry jokes.

Dean and I laugh but Sam shakes his head. "No, not by a long shot."

"I got something I want you to hear." We walk into Jerry's office and he puts a CD in a drive. "I listened to this. And, well, it sounded like it was up your alley. Normally I wouldn't have access to this. It's the cockpit voice recorder for United Britannia flight 2485. It was one of ours."

_"Mayday! Mayday! Repeat! 2485—immediate instruction…may be experiencing some mechanical failure…"_ there's a whooshing sound.

Jerry's talking, "Took off from here, crashed about two hundred miles south. Now, they're saying mechanical failure. Cabin depressurized somehow. Nobody knows why. Over a hundred people on board. Only seven got out alive. Pilot was one. His name is Chuck Lambert. He's a good friend of mine. Chuck is, uh…well, he's pretty broken up about it. Like it was his fault." I would too if I were him.

"You don't think it was?" The mammoth asks Jerry.

He shakes his head. "No, I don't."

I speak up this time. "Jerry, we're gonna need passenger manifests, um, a list of survivors."

"All right."

"And, uh," Dean says. "Any way we can take a look at the wreckage?"

Jerry looks Dean in the eye. "The other stuff is no problem. But the wreckage…fellas, the NTSB has it locked down in an evidence warehouse. No way I've got that kind of clearance."

Dean frowns. "No problem."

* * *

Sam and I are waiting by the Impala outside a Copy Jack, Dean went in a forever ago to get us some IDs. He didn't say what we're going as, but it better be something good, we've waited out here for ages it seems. The two of us came up with a few theories and none of them we really believe could be true, but they're better than nothing.

Finally Dean comes out and towards us. "You've been in there forever." Sam says.

Dean holds up three IDs. "You can't rush perfection."

I snatch one of them from my older brother and read what it says. "Homeland Security?"

My twin raises his eyebrows. "That's pretty illegal, even for us."

Snorting I lightly hit Sam with the back of my hand. "Oh, come on, Sammy, this is fun, see how far we can push our limits."

He rolls his eyes at me. "Of course, you always liked to drag me into one of your fun-seeking-adventures and then blame it all on me and getting me into trouble while all you got was dad saying 'don't do that again'."

I shrug. "Hey, it's not my fault you can't cry on demand." I went around to the backseat and sit in the middle.

Dean gets in the driver's seat. "All right, so, what did you two find?"

"Well, there's definitely EVP on the cockpit voice recorder." Sam reports. "Listen."

Sam plays the tape, which he edited earlier to pull out a scratchy voice. _"No survivors!"_

"'No survivors'?" Dean asks. "What's that supposed to mean? There were seven survivors." He looks between the two of us, expecting us to have the answer.

Again, I shrug. "Got me."

"So, what are you thinking? A haunted flight?" He asks again. Isn't he just full of questions today.

"There's a long history of spirits and death omens on planes and ships, like phantom travellers." Sam starts to explain to Dean the theory that we were working on while he was inside getting us IDs.

Dean makes a noise of understanding. "Or remember flight 401?" I ask Dean.

"Right. The one that crashed," he nods. "The airline salvaged some of its parts, put it in other planes, then the spirit of the pilot and co-pilot haunted those flights."

"Right." Sam says. "Maybe we got a similar deal."

"All right, so, survivors, which one do you want to talk to first?" Dean asks us, starting

I answer him. "Third on the list: Max Jaffey." Deans asks why him. "Well, for one he's from around here. And two, if anyone saw anything weird, he did."

"What makes you say that?"

Sam answers this one. "Well, I spoke to his mother. She told me where I can find him. Turns out he checked himself into a mental hospital."

"Well," Dean says. "What are we waiting for? Let's go."

**Hospital**

Max, walking with a cane, walks in between me and Sam, Dean is on my other side. "I don't understand. I already spoke with Homeland Security."

They always focus on that point. "Right." I smile at him. "Some new information has come up. So if you could just answer a couple questions…"

"Just before the plane went down, did you notice anything…unusual?" Sam asks, glancing over at the guy.

Max doesn't look at any of us, just at the ground. "Like what?"

"Strange lights, weird noises, maybe. Voices." Max looks up at Dean before answering him.

"No, nothing." Strange.

The four of us sit down at a table underneath a tree. "Mr Joffey—"

He interrupts me. "Jaffey."

"Jaffey. You checked yourself in here, right?" I finish. Note to self: don't forget people's names, I have a bad habit of doing that. Max nods. "Can I ask why?"

The guy looks me in the eye while answering. "I was a little stressed. I survived a plane crash."

"Uh huh." Maintaining eye contact I continue. "And that's what terrified you? That's what you were afraid of?"

Jaffey shakes his head. "I…I don't want to talk about this anymore." Ah, there we go, we're on the right track again.

"See, I think maybe you did see something up there. We need to know what." I lean closer to him.

He looks away from me. "No. no, I was…delusional. Seeing things." And here comes the denial.

"He was seeing things." Dean repeats, not believing it one bit. He looks at Sam and me before turning away from Jaffey and looking over behind us, not paying attention.

"It's okay." Sam says. "Then just tell us what you _thought_ you saw, please."

Looking down at the table Jaffey answers us. "There was…this—man. And, uh, he had these…eyes—these, us…black eyes. And I saw him—or I _thought_ I saw him…" Black eyes? Not common.

And now this is more interesting than I originally thought. "What?" Dean and I say at the same time.

"He opened the emergency exit. But that's…that's impossible, right? I mean, I looked it up. There's something like two tons of pressure on that door." Even more interesting. Superhuman strength.

Dean nods his head. "Yeah."

"This man, uh, did he seem to appear and disappear rapidly?" Sam asks him. "It would look something like a mirage?"

"What are you, nuts?" I'm guessing that's a 'no'. "He was a passenger. He was sitting right in front of me." And now we're at completely fun. This job is gonna be a good one.

Smiling again the three of us stand up. "Thank you, that's all we need." I say and we turn and head back to the Impala. Now it's time for the next survivor: George Phelps.

As we pull in front of a house Sam announces from the front seat of the Impala, "So here we are. George Phelps, seat 20C."

"Hmm. Man, I don't care how strong you are." We get out of the car. "Even yoked up on PCP or something, no way you can open up an emergency door during a flight."

"Not if you're human. But maybe this guy George was something else. Some kind of creature, maybe, in human form." I suggest.

Dean gestures to the house in front of us. "Does that look like a creature's lair to you?" Looking at the house it's completely normal, the only thing it's missing is the white picket fence. We knocked on the door and a middle aged woman opens it up.

"We're with Homeland Security, ma'am," We flash our badges before Dean continues. "Mind if we ask you a few questions?"

She shakes her head. "Not at all, come in." Mrs Phelps guides us to the living room and we sit down.

Sam picks up a framed photo. "This is your late husband?"

Nodding she confirms. "Yes, that was my George."

"And you said he was a…dentist?" Dean asks, probably thinking back to our conversation earlier and imagining a monster dentist. I knew dentists were evil, I always hated those bastards.

"Mm-hm. He was headed to a convention in Denver. Do you know that he was petrified to fly? For him to go like that…" She trails off.

Mrs Phelps looks down, her throat clogging up. "How long were you married?" Sam asks her.

"Thirteen years."

"In all that time, did you ever notice anything…strange about him, anything out of the ordinary?" I say, looking around the room.

She hesitates, thinking. "Well…uh, he had acid reflux, if that's what you mean." The three of us share a look. We say our goodbyes and walk out of the house.

"I mean it goes without saying. It just doesn't make any sense." Sam is saying as we make our way down to the Impala.

"A middle-aged dentist with an ulcer is not exactly evil personified. You know what we need to do is get inside that NTSB warehouse, check out the wreckage." Dean says, climbing into the driver's seat.

I climb in the back seat and Sam gets in the front. "Okay, but if we're gonna go that route, we'd better look the part."

The guys went off to go get their clothes and I went to another store to get mine. Walking into the building I became overwhelmed, they had so many different styles, I just want to be able to grab one and go, but I have a feeling this is going to take a while. Eventually though I find some clothes that are suitable for running and climbing, and look somewhat professional.

Still, I was right, it took forever, but I finally found something that will allow me to store weapons and run comfortably. I also threw my hair up in a bun and met the guys in the Impala.

"What took so long, Anne?" Dean asks me, looking annoyed. Both of them are wearing black suits with white shirts.

I get into the car. "I had to find something that would allow me to look respectable, run, and store weapons, that's not easy, most women's clothing is only one of the three, not all." Dean starts the car and drives.

Dean drops the subject and turns up the radio. "Some Kind of Monster" by Metallica is playing, Dean and I start singing along, much to Sam's disapproval. Once the song is over I swear that boy sighed in relief. When we enter the warehouse the three of us flash our badges to the security guard, he nods and lets us in. Once in, Dean pulls out his homemade EMF meter and puts the earbuds in.

"What is that?" Sam asks, looking over at Dean.

"It's an EMF meter. Reads electromagnetic frequencies." Dean continues on.

Sam doesn't let it go. "Yeah, I know what an EMF meter is, but why does that one look like a busted-up Walkman?"

"'Cause that's what I made it out of. It's homemade." Dean grins.

Rolling my eyes I remember when I woke up one night to find Dean pulling apart the Walkman, it was shortly after Sam left. He needed something to do, and so he built that.

"Yeah, I can see that."

Dean's grin disappears. "Check out the emergency door handle." The two of us look over at it, Dean scratches at the yellow dust. "What is this stuff?"

Walking over to it I put some of the yellow dust in a bag. "One way to find out."

"You hear that?" Dean asks us. It's footsteps. We need to get out of here, now. "Let's go, go, go!" he pushes us and we walk out the other entrance. Sam peers around a corner and we walk out casually. Maybe they won't catch us. Maybe we'll get awa—and there's the alarms blaring. Forgetting the casual we run out to the gated exit and we climb over, Dean throws his suit jacket over the barbed wire.

"Well," He adjusts his jacket back on him. "These monkey suits do come in handy." I start to laugh, but we start running again. We don't stop running until we get to the Impala and Dean speeds off.

"That was a good exercise." I say sitting in the backseat. "Now, can we get some pizza when we go back to the motel tonight?"

Sam hits my shoulder, but Dean chuckles. "That sounds like a good plan. It could be better if we get a pie, too."

Now I'm practically drooling. "Mmm, that sounds good—maybe we can stop at a gas station or a Wal-Mart and get some, one for you and one for me and Sammy to share."

Dean looks at me and smirks. "Have I told you that you're the best sister in the world?"

"No, but you should."

Sam turns around to face me. "Hey, can I see the bag with that dust we found?" I pull it out of my pocket and hand it over to him.

"What do you think it is?" Sam's looking intently at it.

"I don't know," his eye brows scrunch up. "Maybe dad's journal will have the answer, or the internet. Whatever it is though, it must have come from the monster that ripped the door off."

Nodding I lean back in my seat and listen to the music playing. After a few songs we make it back to Jerry's office. We walk in and hand him the bag, explaining where we found it. He takes the bag and puts it under a microscope.

"Huh. This stuff is covered in sulfur." I share a look with Sam.

"You're sure?" He asks, looking at the yellow powder again.

Jerry steps back from the microscope. "Take a look for yourself." Before Sam could there's banging sounds from outside the office. "If you will excuse me, I have an idiot to fire."

He walks out of the office and Dean goes over and looks into the microscope. "Hmm. You know, there's not too many things that leave behind a sulfuric residue."

"Demonic possession?" I walk over to where Dean's standing.

"It would explain how a mortal man would have the strength to open up an emergency hatch." Dean says.

Looking at the microscope I bite my lip. "If the guy was possessed, it's possible."

"This goes way beyond floating over a bed or barfing pea soup. I mean it's one thing to possess a person, but to use them to take down an entire airplane?" Dean shakes his head.

"You ever heard of something like this before?" Sam asks.

In unison Dean and I reply, "Never."

* * *

We headed to a Wal-Mart and picked up a couple pies and some other food for however long we're gonna be here. While Sam and I got food, Dean called up a pizza place and ordered two pizzas to our motel.

Back at the motel I'm sitting down in between my brothers watching some tv show eating pizza and drinking beer. I'm on my fourth slice of pizza when Dean breaks out the pie.

"Hey," I grab his fork. "You gonna share?" Dean puts the pie down on the table and glares at me with the mother of all glares. I lean forward and dig my fork into his pie, but before I got it up to my mouth Dean hits my hand away, hard enough that I feel like the bones in my hand are shattered.

My fist goes up to Dean's face, he shoves me onto Sam who moves out of the way and continues to eat. "I just want a bite!" I shout, trying to sit up and get back to the pie, but Dean picks me up and flips me upside down. "Let me down!"

"My pie." He says and I roll my eyes. "Go get your own."

Dean drops me on the ground and goes back to his precious pie. "Thanks for the soft landing."

He points the fork at me. "Don't mess with my pie."

I get the second pie and two forks and go back to the couch and shove Sam until he moves over in between Dean and me. "Want some pie, Sam?" he takes the fork and we eat about half the pie. Between the three of us we drink through a case and a half of beer and all the pizza save four or five pieces.

"I'm gonna go to bed," I announce. "'Night, boys." The chorus a 'good night' and I change into a t-shirt and some shorts before climbing into one of the beds.

* * *

Slowly I open my eyes, the sunlight is filling the room, Sam's still asleep next to me, but Dean's up. I yawn and walk over to the refrigerator and take out a slice of pizza. ""Morning, Anne."

I groan and pour myself a cup of coffee. "What time is it?"

"Seven-forty-three." I groan again. "So we have some research to do, wanna wake sleeping beauty over there or shall I?"

Grinning I get up and walk over to the kitchen. "I will, I have a fantastic idea." I fill two cups up with cold water and walk over to Sam. Dean sees what I'm doing and walks over to get a better view. "One," I mouth to Dean. "Two…three!" I pour the water on Sam's head and jump onto the other bed. And it's a good thing that I did because Sam sat up with a gun in his hand, and started waving it around before he heard us laughing and put the gun down.

"Fuck. What do you want?" Sam asks, standing up and going to the bathroom to dry off.

"Dean here wants us to do some research and since you love research we thought we'd wake you up to include you in this." I manage to say between my laughs.

Eventually we get images and articles taped to the walls and strewn across the beds, Sam's on the computer and Dean and I are reading more articles on the beds.

"So," Sam doesn't move his eyes from the screen. "Every religion in every world culture has the concept of demons and demonic possessions, right? I mean Christian, Native American, Hindu, you name it."

Dean nods. "Yeah, but none of them describe anything like this."

"Well, that's not exactly true. You see according to Japanese beliefs, certain demons are behind certain disasters, both natural and man-made. One causes earthquakes, another causes disease." Sam explains.

"And this one causes plane crashes?" I ask, standing up.

Dean stands up after me. "All right so, what? We have a demon that's evolved with the times and found a way to ratchet up the body count?"

I walk over to Sam as he answers Dean. "Yeah. You know, who knows how many planes it's brought down before this one?" Dean snorts and turns away. "What?"

"I don't know, man. This isn't our normal gig. I mean, demons, they don't want anything, just death and destruction for its own sake. This is big. And I wish dad was here." Dean let out.

Sam surprises me by saying, "Yeah. Me too."

Dean's phone rings. "Hello? Oh, hey, Jerry…wha—Jerry, I'm sorry. What happened?" a longer pause this time. "Where'd this happen?...I'll try to ignore the irony in that…nothing. Jerry, hang in there, all right? We'll catch up with you soon."

"Another crash?" I ask.

"Yeah. Let's go." Dean doesn't say where.

Sam closes his laptop. "Where?"

"Nazareth."

* * *

Jerry's looking through a microscope. "Sulfur?" Dean asks.

He nods. "Well, that's great. All right, that's two plane crashes involving Chuck Lambert. This demon sounds like it was after him." Dean says.

Sam glances at the microscope. "With all due respect to Chuck, if that's the case, that would be the good news."

"What's the bad news?" I ask him.

"Chuck's plane went down exactly forty minutes into flight. And get this, so did flight 2485." Sam explained. Forty, what does that mean? Forty is ten times four, four is two and two, two is one, and ten is five and two, so it boils down to five and one. No significance that I can think of. Forty is also the amount of days that Noah stayed in the ark. Death. It means death.

Jerry tilted his head. "Forty minutes? What does that mean?"

Dean clears his throat. "It's biblical numerology. You know Noah's ark, it rained for forty days. The number means death."

"I went back and there have been six plane crashes over the last decade that all went down exactly forty minutes in." My twin spoke.

"Any survivors?"

Sam shakes his head. "No. or not until now, at least, not until flight 2485, for some reason. On the cockpit voice recorder, remember what the EVP said?"

Dean looks at Sam. "'No survivors'." He pauses. "It's going after all the survivors. It's trying to finish the job."

* * *

Sammy's on the phone. "Really? Well, thank you for taking our survey. And if you do plan to fly, please don't forget your friends at United Britannia Airlines. Thanks." He hangs up and speaks to us. "All right. That takes care of Blaine Sanderson—"

"And Dennis Holloway. He's not flying any time soon." I input. I called him earlier, made sure that he isn't going to fly.

He nods. "Yeah, neither is Blaine."

"So our only wildcard is the flight attendant Amanda Walker." I lean forward, in between the two of them, my elbows resting on their seats.

"Right." Sam says. "Her sister Karen said her flight leaves Indianapolis at eight pm. It's her first night back on the job." So soon? If only she would've taken some time off, she was in a car accident, you'd think that she would at least take off a week or two. Talk about a traumatizing event.

Nodding Dean glances at Sam. "That sounds like just our luck." The Winchester Luck I like to call it, it's where everything that can possibly go wrong does, like Murphy's Law except even things that will never go wrong do.

"Dean, this is a five hour drive, man, even with you behind the wheel." Sam says.

He, of course, ignores Sam. "Call Amanda's cellphone again, see if we can't head her off at the pass."

"I already left her three voice messages." I inform him. "She must have turned her cellphone off. We're never gonna make it."

Dean looks at me. "We'll make it."

* * *

We run into the airport and go to the departure board. "Right there. They're boarding in thirty minutes." Sam points out her flight on the board.

"Okay. We still have some cards to play. We need to find a phone." Dean picks up a courtesy phone that's hanging on one of the walls. "Hi, gate thirteen." A bit of a wait. "I'm trying to contact an Amanda Walker. She's a flight attendant on flight, um…flight 4-2-4."

He's on the phone with her, and I look around, spotting a vending machine, I tune out Dean and turn to Sam. "Sammy, do you have a couple bucks on you?"

The giant looks down at me. "Why do you—you're not gonna get a soda or something, are you?" he's hoping that the answer's no, but, what can I do?

I bite my lip. "Come on, Sam, I'm thirsty!" I look up at him with puppy dog eyes.

"Fine, don't tell Dean." He digs in his pockets then hands me three dollars.

"Thanks, Sammy." I go off to the vending machine that I spotted and got me a drink. They've gotten expensive over the years. When I get back to the two Dean slams the receiver down. "Damn it! So close."

The intercom starts talking, those things are annoying as fuck. "All right," Sam says, speaking over the voice on the intercom. "It's time for plan B. we're getting on that plane."

"Whoa, whoa, now just hold on a second." Dean looks like he's terrified, his eyes are wide, and now I remember why.

The mammoth says to our brother. "Dean, that plane is leaving with over a hundred passengers on board, and if we're right, that plane is gonna crash."

"I know." His face doesn't change, it stays terrified.

I put my hand on Sam's arm, he looks at me. "He's scared to fly."

Sam's jaw drops. "What?" he moves his gaze back to our older brother then back to me.

"I am not," Dean defends. He glares at me. "I just think that humans are meant to keep both of their feet on the ground. Flying is just unnatural."

After a moment Sam sighs. "Dean, you stay here, Anne and I will go and exorcise that demon." I nod, that sounds fine with me.

The oldest shakes his head. "What? Are you insane? You said it yourself, the plane's gonna crash." He gave an involuntary shudder at the thought of getting on a plane that we know is going to crash. That does sound insane, but, we do go running towards the monsters.

"We can all do it or just Sammy and me. There's no other option." I say.

He glares at the two of us. "Come on! Really? Man…" Sam goes up to go buy three tickets and I sat with Dean on the bench waiting.

"You gonna be okay, Dean?" I ask him, he's already looking nervous, glancing over his shoulder and shaking his leg. Next thing you know he'll start singing to himself.

He glances at me. "Yeah—yeah, of course I will." Dean phases out for a bit until Sam comes back with the tickets and I shake him awake.

The three of us go through security and to the gate. We board onto the plane and find seats, Dean sits in the aisle seat, me next to him, and Sam in the window seat. Dean's reading the safety card like his life depends on it.

"Just try to relax." Sam tells him.

"Just try to shut up."

The plane takes off and Dean jumps at every noise. I grab his hand and Dean holds on tight to it, I can't stop the smirk that appears on my face, I look over and an identical one is on Sam's face.

Dean is leaning back, humming to himself. "You're humming Metallica?" Sam gives him a weird look.

"Calms me down." He may not realize it, but he's clutching my hand so tight he's starting to cut off my circulation. It takes me a minute, but once I listen to him instead of focusing on the loss of feeling in my hand I recognize the song he's humming, it's 'Some Kind of Monster' by Metallica.

"Look, man," Sam says. "I get you're nervous, all right? But you got to stay focused." He's open for possession right now, it's true, but I'd like to see Sam stand up to clowns and keep calm.

"Okay."

Sam continues. "I mean, we got thirty-two minutes and counting to track this thing down, or whoever it's possessing, anyway, and perform a full-on exorcism."

"Yeah," Dean says, keeping his eyes tightly shut. "On a crowded plane. That's gonna be easy."

I give Dean's hand a squeeze. "Just take it one step at a time, all right?" I say. "Now, who is it possessing?"

"It's usually gonna be somebody with some sort of weakness, you know, a chink in the armour that the demon can worm through. Somebody with an addiction or some sort of emotional distress." Dean says, his eyes closed, still.

"Well, this is Amanda's first flight after the crash. If I were her, I'd be pretty messed up." I say, glancing behind us to see if I can see her.

Dean just "Mm-hm"'s. He turns to a flight attendant. "Excuse me. Are you Amanda?"

"No, I'm not."

"Oh, my mistake." Dean turns around and looks at the back of the plane. "All right, well, that's got to be Amanda back there, so I'll go talk to her, and, uh, I'll get a read on her mental state."

"What if she's already possessed?" Sam's looking back there too.

"There's ways to test that." Dean reaches down into his bag with his free hand and pulls out a bottle of water. "I brought holy water."

I shake my head. "No." Sam takes the water bottle and puts it in his hoodie. "I think we can be more subtle. If she's possessed, she'll flinch at the name of God."

"Oh. Nice." He says as he turns to go and pulls me with him. "Sorry." Dean lets go of my hand and leaves. I massage my hand, the blood rushes back into it, it's slightly discoloured—or at least I think it is. He's really scared.

Sam reaches over me and grabs Dean's arm. "Hey."

"What?"

"Say it in Latin." I roll my eyes, Dean should know that.

"I know." Dean answers before turning to leave again.

"Okay. Hey!" Den calls out a 'what?' back and Sam replies. "Uh, in Latin, it's 'Christo'."

"Dude, I know! I'm not an idiot!" he makes his way to the back of the plane.

Sam looks at me holding my hand and chuckles. "Can you feel your hand yet? Or do we have to cut it off?"

With my other hand I hit Sam. "Shut up. It's just a bit sore." He grabs it and turns it, there's nail marks from where he dug his nails in. "You know, it's strange, I didn't even see that—or feel it." Sam lets go of my hand and laughs.

I try to tune him out, looking anywhere but at him when Dean stumbles back into his seat. "All right, well, she's got to be the most well-adjusted person on the planet."

"You said 'Christo'?" Sam asks him.

Dean nods. "Yeah."

"And?"

"There's no demon in her. There's no demon getting in her." Great. Now who knows who's the one that's possessed.

I groan and lean against my seat. "That's one person to mark off the list of hundreds."

The plane shakes. "Come on!" Dean grips the armrests tight. "That can't be normal!"

"Hey, hey," I say, grabbing his hand. "It's just a little turbulence." Dean holds onto my hand tight, I put my other hand on top of the hand he's holding, mainly because he's gripping me so tight I want to rip his hand off of mine, but I manage to not do that.

"Annette Lillian Winchester, this plane is gonna crash, okay? So quit treating me like I'm fucking four." He says, I smirk because he didn't deny my hand when I offered it to him, he gripped tight.

Sam clears his throat. "You need to calm down."

"Well, I'm sorry I can't."

"Yes, you can." Sam pushes.

"Dude, stow the touchy-feely, self-help yoga crap, it's not helping." Dean snaps at Sam.

He isn't fazed. "Listen, if you're panicked, you're wide open to demonic possession, so you need to calm yourself down. Right now." Dean takes a long, slow breath. "Good. Now, I found an exorcism in here that I think is gonna work. The Rituale Romanum."

Doesn't sound familiar, but hopefully it'll work. "What do we have to do?" I ask.

"It's two parts. The first part expels the demon from the victim's body. It makes it manifest, which actually makes it more powerful."

The two of us look at him like he's crazy. "More powerful?"

"Yeah."

"How?"

Sam looks at both of us. "Well, it doesn't never to possess someone anymore. It can just wreak havoc on its own." That sounds like a brilliant plan, why don't we just do that to all the demons we come across. Maybe my brother has gone insane, very likely, he has just gone through a tragedy.

"And why is that a good thing?" I look at Sam, raising my eyebrows.

"Well, because the second part sends the bastard back to hell once and for all." That's a pretty good reason. Maybe he isn't insane after all—or at least maybe he's just barely sane.

"First things first. We got to find it." Dean gets up and goes out into the aisle, using his EMF meter.

I stand up to let Sam out. "I'll be right back, stay here." With a look that says 'if you even get up to stretch your legs I will end you' he follows Dean. I move to Sam's seat and look out the window until the two come back. "We found him."

I sit up straighter. "Really? Who?"

They don't sit down, standing there Dean answers me. "The co-pilot."

I hit my head against the plane. "Great. Just fucktastic."

"Come on, we're gonna go see if Amanda will help us." They start to walk back to where Amanda was a few minutes ago.

Shaking my head I get up and follow them. "She's not gonna believe this." Who would?

"Twelve minutes." Dean tells me.

"Oh, hi. Flight's not too bumpy for you, I hope." Amanda says, greeting us.

Dean smiles at her. "Actually that's kind of what we need to talk to you about." Closing the curtain behind me as we all enter the small side room I turn around and face her.

She becomes uneasy, glancing around. "Um, okay. What can I do for you?"

"All right, this is gonna sound nuts, but we just don't have time for the whole 'the truth is out there' speech right now." I roll my eyes at Dean.

"We know you were on flight 2485." Her smile disappears.

She looks at the three of us, probably thinking that we're going to murder her. "Who are you?"

None of us answer her. "Now, we've spoken to some of the other survivors. We know something brought down that plane and it wasn't a mechanical failure." Sam ignores her question.

I spoke up after him. "We need your help because we need to stop it from happening again. Here. Now."

"I'm sorry, I—I'm very busy. I have to go back—" She tries to push past Dean, but he stops her.

Dean speaks to her. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a second. I'm not gonna hurt you, okay? But listen to me, un…the pilot in 2485, Chuck Lambert. He's dead."

"Wait. What? What, Chuck is dead?" She looks up at him to see if he's telling the truth.

"He died in a plane crash. Now, that's two plane crashes in two months. That doesn't strike you as strange?" He continues, trying to get her to understand as fast as possible.

She starts to speak, "I—"

I interrupt her. "Look, there was something wrong with 2485. Now maybe you sensed it, maybe you didn't. but there's something wrong with this flight, too."

Dean looks at her. "Amanda, you have to believe us."

"On…on 2485, there was this man. He…had these eyes." That's it. She'll help now…hopefully.

"Yes," Sam nods. "That's exactly what we're talking about."

"I don't understand, what are you asking me to do?" Amanda looks between us, this time like we're insane—I'm used to this, it's become normal for me over the years.

Dean smiles. "Okay. The co-pilot, we need you to bring him back here."

She gives him a weird look, seeing if he's serious. "Why? What does he have to do with anything?" oh, honey, he has everything to do with this.

"Don't have time to explain. We just need to talk to him. Okay?" Dean tells her.

"How am I supposed to go in the cockpit and get the co-pilot—"

Sam interrupts her. "Do whatever it takes. Tell him there's something broken back here, whatever will get him out of that cockpit."

"Do you know that I could lose my job if you—"

Rolling my eyes I speak before she's done. "Okay, well you're gonna lose a lot more if you don't help us out."

She hesitates before saying, "Okay." She leaves and goes to the cockpit. She knocks on the door and says something to the co-pilot, who follows her back. Sam pulls out the holy water, Dean the journal.

"Annie," Dean says. "Go wait out there."

"No."

He looks at me. "Now!" with a look I turn around and walk behind the curtain. A few seconds later Amanda comes out to join me.

"They kick you out, too?" I ask her.

She looks like she's seen a ghost. "Yeah—who—who are you? Who are they?"

Should I answer honestly? "They're my brothers. I'm Annette—Anne. This is our job. The co-pilot is, well, possessed. They'll fix him up, though. Don't worry." She's looking at me like she's about to pass out. I pat her shoulder. "He'll be fine. My brothers will make sure of that."

Amanda shivers. "It's all just too much. Demons and plane crashes. I need a drink." I chuckle.

"This'll all be over soon and you can take a few days off and drink yourself into a coma."

She gives a shaky laugh. "That sounds fantastic. What about you? Do you three just do this every day?"

"Every day?" I raise my eyebrows. "No. Every other day, really." The plane suddenly dips and heaves violently. "Shit!" I mutter. A moment later a bright electrical charge runs through the entire plane and it levels out.

Dean comes out from the curtain and I wrap my arms around him. "Oh God I am _never_ going on a plane again." He chuckles and I let go of him and go to Sam. "You okay?" He nods and I give him a hug. "You are an idiot, you know that?"

"Yeah, I do."

* * *

We land and are surrounded with FBI, FAA, paramedics and what not. The boys and I are off to the side, watching everything before leaving.

Dean turns to Sam. "You okay?"

Sam stops and turns. "Dean, it knew about Jessica."

"What?" I ask, but they ignore me for the most part.

"Sam, these things, they, they read minds. They lie. All right? That's all it was." He brushes it off. We rent a car and drive back to where we left the Impala, on the way over there Dean explains to me what happened on the plane, Sam pretends to be asleep. I don't blame him, not one bit, I'd probably do the same thing. Dean's reunion with the Impala was kind of touching. Dean ran up to it and ran his hands all over her, it got a bit intense, Sam and I had to look away at one point.

He's still talking to his 'baby'. "Dean!" I hit his shoulder. "Can we go _somewhere_ so we can sleep in a proper bed?"

A glare is sent my way, but he starts her up and drives to the nearest motel where I forget to change my clothes and fall onto one of the beds and am asleep before I know it.

* * *

The next day we go back to see Jerry. "Nobody knows what you guys did, but I do. A lot of people could have been killed." Jerry shakes our hands. "Your dad's gonna be real proud."

"We'll see you around, Jerry." Sam says.

Dean starts to head off but turns back. "You know, Jerry."

"Yeah?"

"I meant to ask you, how did you get my cellphone number, anyway? I've only had it for like six months." That's a very good point.

"Your dad gave it to me."

The three of us freeze. "What?" I ask.

Dean moves away from the door. "When did you talk to him?"

"I mean, I didn't exactly talk to him, but I called his number. His voice message said to give you a call. Thanks again, guys." Oh. I guess we're back to where we started. No clues, no hints, just his journal, but at least this is kind of something.

* * *

"This doesn't make any sense, man." Sam's saying. "I've called dad's number like fifty times. It's been out of service."

I dial dad's number, it goes to voice mail, I put it on speaker. _"This is John Winchester. I can't be reached. If this is an emergency, call my son, Dean. 785-555-0179. He can help."_

We get back in the Impala and drive off.


	5. Bloody Mary

**Chapter nine: Bloody Mary**

_I'm in the Impala with Dean, driving along when I scream at him, "Dean! Turn around! Go back!" He looks at me like I'm insane before he looks behind us and sees something that convinces him to listen to me and turns around fast, I get thrown against the door._

_Both of us get out of the car, Dean shoves me against the car and shouts behind him, "Stay where you are!" I pace, anxious, waiting for them to come out. Dean drags Sam out, but he's different, he's fighting Dean. Not like they usually do, this time it's different, they don't look like themselves…Sam's eyes…they're different. Wrong. They're wrong._

_So are mine. My eyes feel weird. I can see Sam's eyes now. Oh God, oh God, they're black, his eyes, are mine the same? I get the feeling they are._

I sit up in the Impala, a gasp escapes my lips. "Wake up!" Dean's shouting.

"I take it I was having a nightmare." Sam says. I can barely pay attention, I'm trying to keep calm, our eyes, that thought sticks with me. The Impala's not moving, a strange thing to notice now, but what can I say?

"Yeah, both of you." Dean says. I glance up, then open the door, throwing up on the pavement. "Annie?" he comes 'round to me. "You okay?" I don't answer, just continue to spew my guts onto the road.

My vision blurs, I look around, not really seeing. "Dean?" when I speak my voice is shaky. "Dee!"

I feel someone pull me close. "Annie, I'm right here, what's wrong? Open your eyes." I shake my head. "Do we need to go to a hospital?"

"No," I open my eyes slowly. "No, I'm fine. Just—just a bad dream. I can't even remember it." And I can't, just the thought of eyes and Sammy. Dean and I are sitting on the ground, Sam across from us, in front of the puddle of vomit. I don't look at Sam.

"You sure?" I nod. "Okay, let's go get a motel, you can stay there. Get some rest." I start to protest, but he interrupts me. "No buts. You're gonna rest." Sam comes towards me, holding out his hand and I flinch into Dean. I don't see Sam's face, but he's probably hurt, I'm sorry, I don't know why I'm doing that, I just can't look at him.

Dean helps me up and starts to walk me to the car, I push his hands away. "I'm fine, Dean." I spend the drive to a motel trying to remember what I saw and what it has to do with eyes—and Sam. When we get there Dean puts salt around the room and throws the duffel bags of ours in there.

"Stay here, Annie," he says. "If something happens call us, we'll be back." They walk out.

I can't believe they're leaving me here. Not fair. Okay so I guess Dean learned this from dad, though. He did have a knack for leaving me behind when the slightest thing happened to me. It's very annoying. They can't leave me here. I pace around the motel, I have two options, one: Stay here. Unacceptable. Two: Go after them. That sounds like the one I'm gonna go with.

One problem with the second option though, I don't know where they're going. But, I do know that they'll need to go to the victim's house and if I can find the article, look up their name and I'll get an address. I could also go into town, show someone one of my fake IDs and have them tell me where to go, that'll be my back up. First I'll try to just look them up.

Grabbing the article and Sam's laptop I sit down on the couch and get to work. It takes me a few minutes but I eventually find an address. I hope this is worth it.

Shit. I look down at my clothes and see a bit of vomit lingering on me. Taking a deep breath I head into the bathroom, I'm going to make it a quick shower. When I was younger a shower was the only time I was alone—except when dad left me with Bobby or Pastor Jim. Standing in the warm water I fall into old habits and start to think—thinking about everything. What if I was born to a _normal_ family? What if's are a great way to spend my time, retreating into my head, thinking about everything and anything. Once I'm done I wrap myself in a towel and get changed into semi-decent looking clothes. We need to do laundry sometime soon.

Now all I need to do is steal a car. That should be easy at least, dealing with my brothers afterward—that I don't even want to think about yet, I'll just cross that bridge when I get to it.

I settled and took the nearest car that wasn't in the motel parking lot. On my way over to the house I stop once to get some food at a McDonalds, using money I found in Dean's bag to pay for it. When I get to the house the Impala is there. "Shit." I mutter under my breath. "Double shit." I say as I see them come out of the car.

Summoning all my courage I turn off the stolen car and get out. "Dean!" I walk up to them, standing next to Dean. "Glad I made it on time, I stopped for some food—I was surprisingly hungry."

"Annette," Dean glares at me. "I told you to stay—"

"But I'm fine, Dean." I interrupt. "I'm fine. Just trust me on this, okay? It was just a bad dream. Sam hasn't slept since God knows when and you're not putting him under house arrest."

I raise my eyebrows at him, daring him to challenge me. "We're not done with this conversation." We walk into the house, a funeral is going on. There's pictures of the victim, people in mourning clothes.

"Feel like we're underdressed." Dean said, looking down at his clothes. He and Sam are wearing jeans and three layers of shirts, I'm wearing jeans, a tank with a plaid button up shirt, unbuttoned.

I shrug. "Eh, we're good enough." He laughs and we continue walking through the house, towards the back of it. No one seems to stop us. "So, do either of you know what the daughter—what's her name?—looks like?"

"No, not really." Dean answers, looking around. "But I figure we can always ask." We get outside and Dean walks up to the nearest person and asks him, "Can you point us to, uh, Donna Shoemaker?"

The guy glances around before pointing a ways away. "Over there." There's a group of people sitting around two girls. They're probably the daughters of the dead guy. Dean thanks the guy and leads the way over to the group.

Donna Shoemaker is sitting with people around them. "You must be Donna, right?"

"Yeah." She looks up at us.

Sam sadly smiles. "Hi, uh—we're really sorry."

"Thank you."

"I'm Sam, that's Anne and Dean." He gestures to us. "We worked with your dad."

Donna looks over at the girl next to her before looking back at us, a look of disbelief on her face. "You did?"

Dean nods. "Yeah. This whole thing. I mean, a stroke."

The friend interrupts. "I don't think she really wants to talk about this right now." But we kind of need to talk to her about it.

"It's okay. I'm okay."

"Were there any symptoms?" Dean asks her. "Dizziness? Migraines?"

Before Dean even finished his sentence Donna shakes her head. "No."

The little girl, the other daughter of the dead guy, next to her turns to us. "That's because it wasn't a stroke." What would make a little girl say that?

"Lily, don't say that." Donna says as if that's the thousandth time she's said it that day.

"What?" I ask her, maybe the little girl—Lily, saw something or knows something that will help us out. It's a small chance that she saw something and isn't just acting out because her father died.

Donna gives her sister a look. "I'm sorry, she's just upset."

"No, it happened because of me." That's a lot of blame for one girl to hold, too much really for anyone.

"Sweetie, it didn't." She runs a hand down her sister's hair, trying to soothe her.

I kneel down to Lily's height. "Lily. Why would you say something like that?"

The little girl looks me in the eye when she answers, speaking in a low voice. "Right before he died, I said it."

"You said what?"

"Bloody Mary, three times in the bathroom mirror." She pauses. "She took his eyes, that's what she does."

Donna looks at her. "That's not why dad died. This isn't your fault." Her voice is soft.

As I'm standing up Dean speaks to Lily. "I think your sister's right, Lily. There's no way it could have been Bloody Mary. Your dad didn't say it, did he?"

She shakes her head. "No, I don't think so."

"Well, there you go." I say. "It couldn't have been her." We say our goodbyes and how sorry we are before going back into the house and upstairs to the bathroom. Sam pushes it open, there's still dried up blood coating the floor.

Sam walks in, us behind him, Sam starts talking. "The Bloody Mary legend…dad ever find any evidence that it was a real thing?"

"God, I hope not." I shiver. "In elementary some girls said that if I went into the bathroom and said it they would bring me a cupcake, they did, but Sammy here wanted some of mine and I had to share." The giant shoves me before stooping to the floor and touching the blood.

"No one's ever died from the Bloody Mary game that I know of." Sam continues on as if I never spoke.

Dean shrugs. "Yeah, well, maybe everywhere it's just a story, but here it's actually happening."

Looking over at the mirror I speak to the two of them. "The place where the legend began?" I open the medicine cabinet and look around in it before turning back to Dean, avoiding Sam's eyes.

"But according to the legend, the person who says B—" he stops, looking at the mirror that faces him and closes it. "The person who says you know what gets it. But here—"

"Shoemaker gets it instead, yeah." Dean finishes.

"Right."

Dean leans against the wall. "Never heard anything like that before. Still, the guy did die right in front of the mirror, and the daughter's right. The way the legend goes, you know who scratches your eyes out."

"It's worth checking in to. Let's go." We leave the bathroom and run into one of the people that was sitting around Donna and Lily. She has blonde hair and standing as if she knows that we're not who we said we are. I hate how at least _one_ person has to get that look whenever we work a case.

"What are you doing up here?" She asks.

Like a deer caught in the headlights Dean hesitates to answer. "We—we had to go to the bathroom."

The girl doesn't comment on that, instead she comes up with her own question for us. "Who are you?"

"Like we said downstairs, we worked with Donna's dad." Dean tells her.

She raises her eyebrows. "He was a day trader or something. He worked by himself." Oh. Well that changes our story a bit, no wonder she didn't buy our story.

"No, I know, I meant—" Dean tries to say but she cuts him off.

"And all those weird questions downstairs, what was that?" I look over at my brothers. "So you tell me what's going on, or I start screaming."

Sam steps in front of Dean. "All right, all right. We think something happened to Donna's dad."

"Yeah, a stroke." I hold back a snort at her answer.

"That's not a sign of a typical stroke." Sam continues. "We think it might be something else."

Hope she believes it, I can't stand another 'but that _can't_ be true!' rant. "Like what?" She asks. At least she didn't deny it right away.

"Honestly? We don't know yet. But we don't want it to happen to anyone else. That's the truth." Sam looks the girl in the eye.

I walk closer to the stranger. "So if you're gonna scream, go right ahead."

"Who are you, cops?" She asks, I share a look with the eldest of us three.

"Something like that." Dean grins.

Sam reaches into his pocket. "I'll tell you what. Here," He pulls out a piece of paper and pen and starts writing on it, his number, he's writing his number down on it. "If you think of anything, you or your friends notice anything strange, out of the ordinary…just give us a call." He hands her the paper and we continue to walk down the hallway. "Wait," Sam turns around. "What's your name?"

"Charlie."

* * *

"All right," Dean says as we walk into the library. "Say Bloody Mary really is haunting this town. There's gonna be some sort of proof—like a local woman who died nasty."

"Yeah but a legend this widespread it's hard." I walk up to Dean's side, talking softly. "I mean, there's like fifty versions of who she actually is. One story says she's a witch, another says she's a mutilated bride, there's a lot more."

Dean doesn't look at me as we walk towards the computers. "All right so what are we supposed to be looking for?"

The mammoth's behind us. "Every version's got a few things in common. It's always a woman named Mary, and she always dies right in front of a mirror. So we've gotta search local newspapers—public records as far back as they go. See if we and find a Mary who fits the bill."

"Well that sounds annoying." And I can't agree with Dean more. I can read through books for fun, but _research_ is different. It is so annoying and half the time the books are in Latin or some other ancient language, it gives me headaches.

"No it won't be so bad, as long as we…" We reach the computers and Sam stops speaking as we see that all of them have an 'out of order' sign on them. Chuckling, Sam continues. "I take it back. This will be very annoying."

* * *

We took what we can back to the motel. Sam was helping us sort through everything, but he fell asleep on the bed. Dean and I are going through ever single book about murders or suicides or legends about any Mary. My eyes are killing me, but I manage to keep them open.

"Dean," I say closing the book. "Can't we just have Sam do this for a while? My eyes are killing me." Rubbing my eyes I sigh.

"No," Dean says, looking up from his books. "The guy hasn't slept in weeks, let him get an hour or two in."

Groaning I put the book off to the side. "I'm hungry, calling a break. Want anything?" I stretch as I get up, I haven't moved in forever it seems. Dean calls out a no and I raid our refrigerator. There's a whole lot of nothing in here, but I'll find a way to get something to eat. Dean's made more than one meal out of less.

I sit back down with Dean and he turns to me. "What's been going on with you? Ever since you had that nightmare you've been avoiding Sam like the plague."

"I don't know what you're talking about." I take a big bite out of the sandwich.

He gives me serious look, putting down a book. "Anne, listen to me. Whatever happened in your—"

"Can we not talk about this? I'm fine. You're fine. Sam's fine. There's nothing to talk about." I burst out standing up and walking back to the kitchen and finishing my sandwich in there.

When I walk back Sam's sitting up in the bed. "Why'd you let me fall asleep?"

"'Cause I'm an awesome brother. So what did you dream about?" Dean asks, looking away from another book.

Sam puts his face in his hands. "Lollipops and candy canes." And that is something that I know for a fact that Sammy will never dream of. Unless he's on some sort of happy drug, but even then he'll probably dream of mass murdering some sort of monster.

I snort. Dean goes back to the book. "Yeah, sure."

"Did you find anything?" Sam walks over to where we have our little mini-city of books and articles and sits down in a clearing.

"Oh besides a whole new level of frustration?" Dean glares at the books. "No. We've looked at everything. A few local women, a Laura and a Catherine committed suicide in front of a mirror, and a giant mirror fell on a guy named Dave, but uh, no Mary."

I nod. "Yeah, same here."

"Maybe we just haven't found it yet." Sam groans.

"I've also been searching for strange deaths in the area, you know…eyeball bleeding, that sort of thing. There's nothing. Whatever's happening here, maybe it just ain't Mary." Dean says. It's true, it doesn't look like her, and to be honest I think that I could use a night off, all of us could.

Sam's phone goes off. "Hello?" he looks concerned. "Where are you?...Okay, we're on our way." He hangs up. "It's Charlie. There's been another death. I told her we'd meet her at a park."

The three of us jump up and go out the door, Sam gets in the driver's seat, I slide in the back. "So what happened?"

"I don't really know." Sam says. "I guess we'll find out, all she really said was that her friend died by the mirror and to meet her in the park."

When we get to the park Charlie is crying on a bench. Dean and I sit next to her, Sam stands in front of the bench. "Charlie, what happened?" He asks.

She looks up at him, sniffling. "We—we were talking on the phone and she," her voice breaks. "They found her on the bathroom floor. And her—her eyes. They were gone."

"I'm sorry." Again Sam empathizes.

Charlie pulls out a tissue and wipes her nose. "And she said it." Dean nudges me and we share a look. "I heard her say it. But it couldn't be because of that. I'm insane, right?"

"No," Dean looks at her. "You're not insane."

"Oh God, that makes me feel so much worse." Yeah, join the club. Monsters are real, yes they will hurt you, no that isn't a mask, just run and shoot—don't shut your eyes and don't blink.

Sam clears his throat. "Look. We think something's happening here. Something that can't be explained."

"And we're gonna stop it but we could use your help." I look around Dean to say to her.

The crying girl hesitates. "Okay. What do I have to do?"

* * *

Charlie opens up the window for us and I climb in first, I used Dean to get me up to the window—Sam offered to give me a lift, but I said I'd do fine on my own, in the end Dean gave me a lift practically shoving me through the window. After me the boys come through the window, well, Sam, a duffel bag, and then Dean. I toss the bag onto the bed and start to go through it.

"What did you tell Jill's mom?" Sam asks.

She glances over my shoulder, looking inside the bag before answering. "Just that I needed some time alone with Jill's pictures and things." Dean shuts the curtains. "I hate lying to her."

Got it! I pull out the camera from the bag. "Trust us, this is for the greater good. Hit the lights." I tell her.

The lights go out. "What are you guys looking for?"

I toss the camera to Sam as Dean answers Charlie's question. "We'll let you know as soon as we find out."

"Hey, night vision." Sam smiles as Dean turns it on for him. "Perfect."

Sam turns the camera on Dean. "Do I look like Paris Hilton?" I hit Dean's arm muttering 'idiot' under my breath. Sam walks away with the camera, opening Jill's closet door and begins filming around the mirror.

"So I don't get it. I mean…the first victim didn't summon Mary, and the second victim did. How's she choosing them?" I lean against the bed, looking at my brothers, waiting for an answer.

Dean shrugs. "Beats me. I want to know why Jill said it in the first place."

We both turn to Charlie. "It's just a joke."

I raise my eyebrows at that. "And now she's dead." She looks like she's about to cry, but despite my brother's glare I don't take back my words. "Somebody's gonna say it again, it's just a matter of time."

"Hey." Sam calls from the bathroom. "There's a black light in the trunk, right?"

"I'll go get it." I start to go, but Dean grabs my arm. "Dean, I'm a big girl, I can go to the Impala and back and not get attacked by monsters."

He rolls his eyes at me. "Yeah, but you can barely get into the window if you were standing on Sam's shoulders." I hit him. "Okay, maybe that was exaggerated, but I'll go get it. Stay here." Dean lets go of my arm and disappears out of the window.

Charlie doesn't look at me, probably still miffed about my little comment. Dean comes back into existence. "Got it?" I ask him.

Smirking his famous smirk he holds the black light up. "Got it."

Sam takes the mirror out of the bathroom and to the bed, laying it there upside down, peeling off the brown paper that's on the back of the mirror. The mammoth shines the black light over the back of the mirror and we see a handprint, and the words 'Gary Bryman'.

"Gary Bryman?" Charlie reads.

Sam turns to her. "You know who that is?" she shakes her head.

"Let's get out of here." I say, and the two nod, we sneak back out of the window as Charlie goes down the stairs.

"So, Gary Bryman was an eight-year-old boy." Sam says, we're sitting outside on a bench again, Charlie's with us. "Two years ago he was killed in a hit and run. The car was described as a black Toyota Camry. But nobody got the plates or saw the driver."

Charlie gasps. "Oh my God."

We turn and look at her. "What?" Sam asks.

"Jill drove that car." So that answers that—kind of. Why would the name of a kid she killed years ago, what does this mean? Is there a connection? A significance?

I turn to Dean as he starts to speak. "We need to get back to your friend Donna's house." We get up and go back to the Impala, driving to the Shoemaker house. Charlie comes up with some excuse to get us in and we go back to the bathroom where Mr Shoemaker was killed with the black light. There's a handprint on it and the words 'Linda Shoemaker'.

"Linda Shoemaker." Sam reads. "Some relation to them, we should ask Donna.

Charlie bites her lip. "I don't think she'll like anyone asking about this…" But she nods and walks out of the bathroom and downstairs, to where Donna is.

"Donna," Sam asks. "Do you know who Linda Shoemaker is?"

The woman does a double take. "Why are you asking me this?" And Charlie is right, she did not take well to us asking about this.

"Look we're sorry, but it's important." I say, barely even speaking, not meeting her eyes.

She takes a deep breath. "Yeah. Linda's my mom okay? She overdosed on sleeping pills, it was an accident, and that's it. I think you should leave."

Dean steps forward, towards her. "Now Donna, just listen—"

"Get out of my house!" She runs upstairs, avoiding any more of our questions. That actually went better than I thought, I figured she'd try to kill us or call the police.

Charlie watches her run up the stairs. "Oh my God. Do you really think her dad could've killed her mom?" it fits. Now we have a pattern, all the victims have killed someone, whether an accident or not.

I shrug. "Maybe."

"I think I should stick around." Charlie says, looking determined.

Dean thinks it over for a second. "All right. Whatever you do, don't—"

"Believe me, I won't say it."

* * *

Back at the motel Dean is on the computer and Sam's looking at some things posted on a bulletin board. I'm sitting next to Dean, looking over his shoulder at the screen.

"Wait, wait, wait, you're doing a nationwide search?" I ask him, scooting closer to him to get a better look.

"Yep. The NCIC, the FBI database—at this point any Mary who died in front of a mirror is good enough for me." Dean answers, his eyes never leaving the computer.

Sam glances over at us. "But if she's haunting the town, she should have died in the town."

"I'm telling you there's nothing local, I've checked. So unless you got a better idea—" Dean tears his eyes off of the screen and up at Sam.

"The way Mary's choosing her victims, it seems like there's a pattern." Sam comes over to us and I get up and walk to the beds, throwing myself on it.

The oldest gives me a look that I ignore. "I know, I was thinking the same thing." I pull the pillow over my head and try to block them out. I need time to think, away from them.

"With Mr Shoemaker and Jill's hit and run." Sam continues talking.

I sit up. "Both had secrets where people died."

Both of them turn their eyes towards me. "Right." Sam says. "I mean there's a lot of folklore about mirrors—that they reveal all your lies, all your secrets, that they're a true reflection of your soul, which is why it's bad luck to break them."

"Right, right." Dean starts talking. "So maybe if you've got a secret, I mean like a really nasty one where someone died, then Mary sees it and punishes you for it."

"Whether you're the one that summoned her or not." Sam finishes.

Dean turns the computer out a bit and motions for me to come closer. "Take a look at this." There's a picture of a woman laying by a mirror in a puddle of blood. Dean hands Sam a picture that he's all ready printed out. It's of a handprint and the letters 'Tre'.

"It looks like the same handprint." Sam says, handing it to me.

I hand the picture back to Dean and he places it back on the table. "Her name was Mary Worthington—an unsolved murder in Fort Wayne, Indiana."

"Anne, you stay here, we'll be right back." Dean says, heading for the door.

Grabbing his arm I turn him around. "No, that's two hours away from here—"

"Someone needs to stay in town to watch out for Charlie." He pries my fingers off of his arm. "Call us if anything—and I mean _anything_ happens." Chuckling Dean starts back to the door. "And don't say the thing!"

Rolling my eyes I pick up the remote. Sam comes up to me. "Hey, you okay?"

I look anywhere but Sam. "Yeah, I'm fine. Have fun."

He grabs my shoulders. "Look at me." Shocked I look at his forehead. "What's going on?" I shove him off me. "Fine. Here, I gave Charlie your number, told her to call you if she needs to." He hands me a piece of paper with numbers, presumably Charlie's, on it. Without another word the two walk out of the motel.

Great. Sighing, I plop on the couch and turn on the television, pick up my phone and order some Chinese food. The best thing about the two of them not being here is that I can use their money to pay for the food instead of my own. I even tapped into Dean's booze and drank that with the take-out food.

Half way through some dumb reality tv show that has got to be staged when I fell asleep, waking up from another series of nightmares. It's two in the afternoon, I slept until two in the fucking afternoon. I check my phone, no missed calls. The boys haven't checked in and Charlie hasn't run into any problems. So far so good.

And that's my phone. "Hello?"

_"Anne?" _It's Charlie. _"Anne, it's me, Charlie."_

"Charlie, what's wrong?" It sounds like she's crying. "What happened?"

_"I—can I just come over?"_

"Of course." I give her the address of the motel.

She repeats it back to me. _"I'll be right there."_

I hang up the phone and call Dean. "Dean? We've got a problem."

He groans. _"All ready? What happened?"_

"No idea. Charlie's on her way over, she was crying, couldn't say what happened to her. Just hurry back, okay?" Dean says he will before hanging up the phone.

* * *

I hear the car out front and open the door. "Cover the mirrors!" Charlie has her hands covering her eyes. Darting inside I grab the sheets and blankets and cover the mirrors and windows as she makes her way to the motel.

"Okay," I grab her arm and guide her inside. "It's okay, you can open your eyes, I've covered all the mirrors. Open your eyes."

Slowly and hesitantly she opens her eyes up. "Now listen. You're gonna stay right here on this bed, and you're not gonna look at all the glass or anything else that could has a reflection, okay? And as long as you do that, she cannot get you."

"But I can't keep it up forever. I'm gonna die, aren't I?"

"Here," I hand her some of my left over Chinese food. "Eat. My brothers are coming back, I called them right after you called me so they should be here in another two hours or one and fifteen minutes since Dean is driving." That got a chuckle out of her. "What happened?"

She takes a breath. "I was in the bathroom and Donna said it, and then I started to see _her_ in the mirrors and—"

"Shh," I hold her hand. "Calm down. Let's just watch some tv while we wait."

An hour later the boys came rushing in. "She's after Charlie." I tell them in a quiet voice.

Dean sits next to her on the bed. "All right Charlie. We need to know what happened."

"I already told Anne. We were in the bathroom, Donna said it."

Dean shakes his head. "That's not what we're talking about. Something happened, didn't it? In your life…a secret…where someone got hurt. Can you tell us about it?"

With a shaky breath she answers. "I had this boyfriend. I loved him. But he kind of scared me too, you know? And one night, at his house, we got in this fight. Then I broke up with him, and he got upset, and he said he needed me and he loved me, and he said 'Charlie, if you walk out that door right now, I'm gonna kill myself.' And you know what I said? I said 'Go ahead.' And I left. How could I say that? How could I leave him like that? I just...I didn't believe him, you know? I should have." She starts crying again.

We leave her there and get back in the Impala and the boys explain to me what they've found so far, how the mirror is in the town and her murder.

"You know," Dean says. "Her boyfriend killing himself, that's not really Charlie's fault."

Sam looks over at him from the passenger seat. "You know as well as I do that spirits don't exactly see shades of grey, Dean. Charlie had a secret, someone died, that's good enough for Mary."

"I guess."

We drive in silence for a while before Sam speaks up again. "You know, I've been thinking." Never a good sign. "It might not be enough to just smash that mirror."

Dean glances at Sam. "Why, what do you mean?"

"Well, Mary's hard to pin down, right? I mean she moves around from mirror to mirror so who's to say that she's not just gonna keep hiding in them forever? So maybe we should try to pin her down, you know, summon her to her mirror and then smash it."

I pull my hair out of my face, where it fell out of the hair-tie. "Well how do you know that's gonna work?"

"I don't." that's reassuring. "Not for sure."

"Who's gonna summon her?" Dean asks.

I'm out of the question, so is Dean and Sam. "I will. She'll come after me."

"You know what, that's it." He pulls the car over and turns to Sam. "This is about Jessica, isn't it? You think that's your dirty little secret that you killed her somehow? Sam, this has got to stop, man. I mean, the nightmares and the calling her name out in the middle of the night—it's gonna kill you. Now listen to me—It wasn't your fault. If you wanna blame something then blame the thing that killed her. Or hell, why don't you take a swing at me? I mean I'm the one that dragged you away from her in the first place." I sit back, trying to make myself disappear. If there's one thing I've learned it's that you don't get in the middle of one of their hissy fits.

"I don't blame you."

It's not reassuring to Dean. "Well you shouldn't blame yourself, because there's nothing you could've done."

"I could've warned her."

Now I roll my eyes at him and hit both of them on their shoulders. "Will you two shut up for two minutes? You're always fighting and now this argument is pointless!"

"Anne—"

"No." I put my foot down. "Just stop it. Sam, it's not your fault, there's nothing you could've done and anyway there's no secret, you've told us everything—" I pause he doesn't meet my eyes. "—right?"

The look on his face has me thinking otherwise, but I hope that I'm right. "No." he quietly says. "Not everything." I want to groan.

Dean glares at him with me. "What are you talking about?"

"Well it wouldn't really be a secret if I told you, would it?" I bite the inside of my cheek.

Looking surprised Dean shakes his head. "No. I don't like it. It's not gonna happen, forget it."

"Dean, that girl back there is going to die unless we do something about it. And you know what? Who knows how many more people are gonna die after that? Now we're doing this. You've got to let me do this." Sam rants and I just lay back in the back seat and we keep silent the rest of the drive.

At the shop's door I pick the lock and we get in, there's about a thousand mirrors in the room, hung all over the place.

Sighing I glance at my brothers. "Well…that's just great." Dean pulls out the picture of Mary's dead body, looking at the mirror. "All right, let's start looking."

We split up, searching for the mirror. I hear Dean say. "Maybe they've already sold it."

"I don't think so." He's found it. I make my way to Sam and look, the mirror looks exactly like the one in the picture.

"That's it." Dean sighs. "You sure about this?"

Sam hands over the flashlight and sighs. "Bloody Mary. Bloody Mary." He picks up a crowbar. "Bloody Mary."

A light goes through the store. "I'll go check that out. Annie, stay with Sam, be careful." Sam grips the crowbar. "Smash anything that moves." And with that he crawls away towards the front door. I raise my crowbar, looking at all the mirrors around us.

"Sam?" I breathe. "You sure she'll die if we smash her in her mirror?"

He doesn't answer right away. "No. But it's worth a shot."

"Another thing." I say. "If we make this out alive, remind me to skin you for coming up with this plan."

My brother chuckles before he smashes a mirror. I turn his way and see her in another one and smash it too. He turns to the original mirror. "Come on. Come into this one." I keep looking around, she's gotta be here somewhere…

I hear Sam start to have trouble breathing. "Sam!" There's blood coming out of his eye and he drops the crowbar and grabs his heart. I try to get over to the mirror, but she shoves me into a row of mirrors behind me instead. "Sammy!" I'm pretty sure that I'm bleeding and have glass in me—everywhere, but I can feel the pain later, I need to get to Sam.

"It's your fault." The mirror says. "You killed her. You killed Jessica. You never told her the truth—who you really were." He falls to the floor and I shout out his name once again, but it does nothing, I can't get up, I'm trapped here, barely able to move. "But it's more than that, isn't it? Those nightmares you've been having of Jessica dying, screaming, burning—You had them for days before she died. Didn't you? You were so desperate to ignore them, to believe they were just dreams." I manage to get out and run towards Sam. "How could you ignore them like that? How could you leave her alone to die? You dreamt it would happen!" I smash the mirror with Sam's crowbar and Dean comes running in right after.

"Sammy!" Dean shouts as he goes over to him.

"It's Sam."

I choke back a laugh, he's fine. "God, are you okay?" Dean asks him.

"Uh, yeah."

Dean looks up to me. "What happened to you?"

"You know, just got thrown into a few hundred mirrors by our friend Mary." I start to laugh, but wince instead. Dean comes up to me and Sam starts to sit up. "I'm fine, Dean. Sam needs your help."

And he does. Dean goes and pulls Sam up off the ground, slinging one arm over his neck. The three of us start to walk out until we hear something and turn to see Mary coming out of the mirror frame. "Shit!" I mutter. She's crawling towards us, we all fall to the ground and the pain is almost blinding—I'm bleeding out of my eyes. Somehow the pain disappears, I look to see Dean holding a mirror up to Mary.

It starts talking to Mary. "You killed them! All those people! You killed them!" She starts choking to death and melts into a pile of blood. Dean throws down the mirror he held and it shatters.

"Hey, guys." Dean says.

I lay on my stomach, the least damaged part of me. "Yeah?"

"This has got to be like…what? Six-hundred years of bad luck?" if I had the energy and could reach him I would hit him over his head, instead I just laugh. "Come on," he gets Sam up then comes toward me. "Jesus, Anne, you look horrible."

"Thanks, that's what every woman wants to hear." He pulls me up gently and we walk out to the Impala. "If either of you get blood in my baby I will make you regret Mary not killing you."

* * *

Back at the motel when we enter Charlie freaks out. Understandable in the state that we're in. Dean orders me to lay on my stomach on the bed and wait for him to pull out the glass. I do as I'm told, after a little bit of waiting I hear him walk up to me.

"All right, now comes the part where you drink this and try not to scream." He hands me a bottle of something, I don't even notice as I gulp down as much as I can. I feel him cut the shirt down the middle, undoing the clasp of my bra, pushing the material out of the way and him pulling out pieces of glass.

I'm not fully sure on where Charlie and Sam are, they should be somewhere here. But I can't concentrate on that. Biting my lip and drinking more of the whiskey that Dean gives me is the only way I'm going to make it through this.

When he's done Dean pours alcohol over my wounds and bandaging them up. "That should be good enough for now. How do you feel?"

I turn my head towards Dean just to glare at him. "Like I was pushed into mirrors and just had them ripped out of me. How do you think?"

"Sounds like you're back to normal." He chuckles at me.

"Harsh, I am injured here, you could show a little sympathy." I sit up, holding my shirt to my chest. "Do me a favour?"

Dean thinks it over before sighing. "Yeah, what?"

"Can you get me a shirt?" He throws me a shirt from my bag and stiffly try to put it on, after laughing at my attempts he goes behind me and helps me get my arms through, once it's on I pull out from under my shirt and bra. "Thanks."

"Now, lay down and rest, don't need you bleeding next time you're in the Impala." I lay back down and chuckle.

"Don't worry, I won't ruin your baby." He pokes my back and I groan in pain. "I was being sincere!" all I hear is a snort in response. "Where's Sam and Charlie?"

He sits on the bed opposite me. "He went to go drop her off at her house, he'll be back for us in a few minutes. Will you tell me what's going on since you had that dream? What was it about that made you so scared of Sam?"

I shake my head. "Nothing, I'm just—I'm fine now. It shouldn't be a problem."

"Good. You should sleep, it'll help." And I let myself give into sleep, falling into a deep sleep, so deep I barely woke up when I felt someone shaking me and calling out my name. "Come on, Anne, we're leaving."

Of course we're leaving, no time to rest, always moving. "I'm—I'm up." I say through a yawn. Dean picks me up and sets me on my feet. "I'm fine and I could've gotten up on my own, Dee."

"You only call me 'Dee' when you're hurt or sick, so you're obviously in pain." He responds, watching me like I'm going to fall down at any moment.

"That doesn't mean anything. I call you 'Dee' all the time."

Dean chuckles and opens the door for me. "Sure." He must've already taken our bags into the car because he walks out with nothing in his hands. Sam's not in the room either.

On our way to the car, which is taking longer because I feel like every step is some new kind of torture. "Where are we going next?" I ask, hoping to distract him from treating me like I'm going to break at a moment's notice.

We get to the Impala and I climb in on the driver's side, scooting to the middle, Sitting next to Sam. Dean waits until he gets into the driver's seat to answer. "I don't know, how about we go…southwest? Sound good? How about New Mexico?"

Grinning I lean my head against Sam's shoulder. "Sounds good to me." After barely even looking at him this entire hunt jumps a little at the gesture, but snaps out of it and puts his arm around me, drawing me into him. "I'm sorry Sammy."

"It's okay, Annie, it's okay." Again I feel myself slip into sleep.

* * *

**A/N: Okay so this one is a full chapter so there won't be an update tomorrow and I know I'm updating this at midnight, but it's technically Saturday and I'm impatient and excited that I finished it all in one go with the threat of my sister going into labour at any moment now, she could literally call me up at any moment and be like 'I'm in labour, come watch my son while I go force a kid out of me' and that thought scares me 'cause my nephew has a feeding tube and I can connect him to his bag but I've never given him a bath and I don't want to mess up his button or hurt him and connecting him to his extension is much harder than connecting him to his bag and I'm going to be watching him on my own for at least two days. Please review, sorry about the rant, and thanks.**


	6. Skin

**Chapter 10: Skin**

It took me a while to heal, but I did, mostly. I have scars on my back, but there not the first and most definitely won't be the last I get. During the time I was healing Dean had me staying behind a lot and only letting me come when we were on a salt-and-burn or something easy. By the time I was at the point where I was going to salt and burn him I was fully healed and he stopped forcing me to say behind. I think Sam may have said something because I kept telling Sam that if Dean didn't stop being so damn protective I was going to murder him in a brutal fashion, but that's only a theory. It could be that Dean just finally got tired of me badgering him all the time. I've always been good at getting on his nerves when I want to, but I think that now I've gotten even better.

We just finished a poltergeist gig up in Utah, and are now just kind of driving around, Dean's idea, waiting for another job or something to do. Dean has a whole plan of where we should go and do thought out and is in the middle of describing it, but I kind of zoned out, maybe I should listen to what he's saying…

"Alright, I figure we'd hit Tucumcari by lunch, then head south, hit Bisbee by midnight." Dean's saying, but neither Sam nor I answer. Dean pulls up to a gas station and Sam's still on his phone like he has been for the past five hours not even acknowledging that Dean said anything at all. Dean glances at me and smirks. "Sam wears women's underwear."

Sam doesn't look up from his phone and I start to flick Sam's hair until he swats my hand away. "I've been listenin', I'm just busy." If I didn't know better I'd think that his hands were glued to the thing.

I lean over and look at the screen of his phone, trying to see what's so interesting, but he just moves it so I can't see. "Busy doin' what?"

"Reading e-mails." Dean gets out of the car and I follow, wanting to stretch my legs. We've been cooped up in the car for far too long, but I didn't complain, I learned that it's better to just keep your mouth shut.

Dean starts to fill up the Impala and I lean against the car. "E-mails from who?" He asks, glancing into the window.

"From my friends at Stanford."

The two of us get closer to the window, looking at Sam. "You're kidding." Dean says. "You still keep in touch with your college buddies?"

I elbow him. "Come on, Dean. Can't he have some normal in his life? If he would rather speak to his normal friends than to us, well then that's his loss." Dean shoots a glare at me and I move away from the window back to my original spot, leaning against the back door.

Turning to me Dean rants, "Well, what is he gonna tell 'em? Huh? 'Oh yeah me and my siblings just salted and burned some dead guy's bones, how's school?'" Dean looks back at Sam. "What do you tell them about where you've been, what you've been doin'?" I hate to admit it, but Dean's got a point. What can he tell his friends? He can only lie to them which probably isn't healthy for a friendship, but what do I know of friendships? I've only ever known normal people for a few days at the most.

"I tell 'em I'm on a road trip with my brother and sister. I tell 'em I needed some time off after Jess." Sam looks up at Dean.

"Oh, so you lie to 'em." Basically.

Sam shakes his head. "No. I just don't tell 'em…everything."

I snort at them. "All right, you two can continue to fight while I go inside." I leave them there and head towards the store, not looking at either of them. They're just gonna continue to fight and then drag me into it asking whose right and then it'll end in Armageddon. It's better to just leave early on in the fight.

First things first. Restroom. I've needed to pee for the last hundred miles, but I've learned to hold it until we stop and not say anything, kind of like the whole don't complain if you need to stretch your legs. Next stop: snacks. Checking to make sure I have some cash on me I grab a couple bags of skittles, pretzels, more snacks, and three sodas. Throwing them down at the cash register I look back to make sure that the Impala is still there and they haven't left me.

"This all?" the cashier asks me in a bored voice. I nod. "That'll be eleven dollars and fifty-three cents." Handing him the money I glance behind me, Dean's putting away the pump. I take the bag he hands me and leave without another word to him.

Walking back to the Impala I hear Sam saying, "It is our problem. They're my friends."

"Who is?" I ask, getting into the car.

Sam turns around in his seat. "My friend Rebecca and her brother Zach. Zach's been charged with murder but he was with Rebecca when it happened. They're in St. Louis, what do you think?"

And this is where I have to choose a side.

Both of them turn to me, expecting me to side with them. "Well, what can it hurt? I mean—who knows? This might be a case." Really I think it'll be good for Sam to get to see his friends—maybe he'll sleep better or be in a better mood. Lately he's been moping around and getting on my nerves. He's been on his phone constantly and almost fell into a grave on a salt-and-burn, this may be the thing that snaps him out of Zombie Mode.

"St. Louis is four hundred miles behind us." I put on a puppy dog face (Sam probably has his on too) as Dean looks between us before sighing. "Fine. Fine—we'll go." He gets in the car and Sam and I share a smile. Sam thanks him and Dean mutters "Whatever" before turning on the radio and singing loudly.

* * *

We made it to St Louis and Sam starts to give Dean directions to his friend's house while I try to stay awake in the backseat. Once we pulled up to the driveway Sam was all ready out the door, I don't even think that Dean parked the car before he was out. I get out and follow him to the door, he knocks. A woman opens it, she's blonde and about as tall as I am, a little shorter, and when she sees Sam she says, "Oh my God, Sam!"

"Well, if it isn't little Becky." He says and I look at Dean, he meets my eyes and mouths 'kill me now' I chuckle, looking to see if the other two noticed—they didn't. They're too caught up in their reunion.

The woman playfully shoves Sam. "You know what you can do with that little Becky crap." The two hug and I stand back with Dean. She hasn't even acknowledged our presence and Sam doesn't mention us either.

Sam pulls away. "I got your e-mail."

"I didn't think that you would come here."

Dean steps forward and extends his hand, seeing as Sam isn't going to introduce us and she isn't interested in finding out who we are. "Dean. Older brother." She shakes his hand.

I push him out of the way and shake her hand as I introduce myself. "Anne. The giant's twin."

She nods at us. "Hi." Before turning her attention back to Sam.

"We're here to help. Whatever we can do." Sam says.

Rebecca moves away from the door, inviting us to come in the house. "Come in."

"Nice place." Dean looks around. And it is, there's no mess, everything is in its place, I bet there's not even any dust in the entire house.

It seems so…odd, but nice too, I wonder if there's a reality out there where we have a house like this, a reality where the fire didn't happen and we didn't hunt, but I shouldn't think that way. I like hunting I do, but sometimes I can't help it, I start to think about all the what if's there are. Hunting is all I know, I don't think that I could leave this way of life. I know of nothing else. Even when it all becomes too much for me I carry I just do what Dean does, I bury it. Hide it away in my mind. Ever since Sam left I started looking up to Dean more than usual. And that's saying something, when I was younger I used to call him my dad, drove my actual dad nuts.

I'm dragged back into reality when I hear Rebecca speaking from behind us. "It's my parents'. I was just crashing here for the long weekend when everything happened. I decided to take the semester off. I'm gonna stay until Zach's free." That's _if_ he's not guilty. I'm not sure that this is our kind of thing, but I'm not gonna say anything to Sam or Dean, I'm going to stay neutral.

"Where are your folks?" Sam asks.

"They live in Paris for half the year, so they're on their way home now for the trial." We walk into the kitchen. Her parents must be rich to be able to do that and have such a nice house—not to mention plane tickets. "Do you guys want a beer or something?"

Smiling Dean starts to answer. "Hey—"

But Sam interrupts him, sending him a look. "No, thanks. So tell us what happened."

Rebecca takes a breath before beginning. "Well, um, Zach came home, and he found Emily tied to a chair. And she was beaten up and bloody, and she wasn't breathing." She starts to cry. "So, he called 911, and the police—they showed up, and they arrested him. But, the thing is, the only way that Zach could've killed Emily is if he was in two places at the same time. The police—they have a video. It's from the security tape from across the street. And it shows Zach coming home at 10:30. Now, Emily was killed just after that, but I swear, he was here with me, having a few beers until at least after midnight."

"You know, maybe we could see the crime scene. Zach's house."

Dean clears his throat. "We could."

"Why?" She asks, looking at Sam only. "I mean, what could you do?"

"Well, Anne and me, not much. But Dean's a cop." I have to cover my laugh with a cough. That is the most hilarious thing he's ever said. I think that the world will break the day that Dean is on the right side of the law let alone enforcing them.

I guess Dean started to laugh too because Sam gave him a look then passed the look onto me afterwards. "Detective, actually." Dean straightens up in his seat.

She raises her eyebrows. "Really?" he nods and I try to keep a straight face. "Where?"

Without hesitating he answers. "Bisbee, Arizona. But I'm off duty now."

Rebecca thinks about it for a second before saying, "You guys, it's so nice to offer, but I just—I don't know."

"Bec, look," Sam leans towards his friend. "I know Zach didn't do this. Now, we have to find a way to prove that he's innocent."

"Okay." She says. I still can't get my head around the fact that Sam is outright lying to his friend, especially after the conversation we had earlier where he said he didn't lie. "I'm gonna go get the keys." Rebecca walks away, down the hall.

I share a look with Dean. "Oh yeah." Dean looks over at Sam. "You're a real straight shooter with your friends."

"Yeah," I chuckle. "I mean, Dean, as a _cop_? That is just ridiculous." I still can't get the image of Dean as a cop obeying the laws not killing anything out of my head, and I try to keep myself from smiling and fail.

Sam rolls his eyes at us. "Look, Zach and Becky need our help."

The oldest stops looking amused and leans back in his seat. "I just don't think this is our kind of problem."

"Two places at once? We've looked into less." Sam argues, Dean says nothing else, contemplating it in his head. I keep my mouth shut, I don't know for sure if it's anything so until I know for sure I'm not going to announce my opinion.

Rebecca comes back with her keys. "Okay, let's go."

We get out of the car and walk up to the house. "You're sure this is okay?" Rebecca asks for the thousandth time.

"Yeah." Dean says. "I am an officer of the law."

She unlocks the door for us and we walk in, the first thing I notice is that everything is smeared with blood. All of the furniture, the walls, everything is coated in blood. Someone had a bit too much fun with murder.

"Bec," Sam calls. "You wanna wait outside?"

I hear her enter the house behind us. "No. I wanna help."

"Tell us what else the police said." Sam asks her.

"Well, there's no sign of a break-in. they say that Emily let her attacker in. the lawyers—they're already talking about plea bargain." The girl starts to cry and I roll my eyes, looking at the blood splattered pictures on a mantel. "Oh God…"

Glancing behind me I see Sam comforting her. "Look, Bec, if Zach didn't do this, it means someone else did. Any idea who?"

There's a pause before she launches into another story. "Um, there was something, about a week before. Somebody broke in here and stole some clothes—Zach's clothes. The police—they don't think it's anything. I mean, we're not that far from downtown. Sometimes people get robbed."

A dog is howling and barks, Sam walks away to go see the house and Dean and I go over to it and I open it, it's the neighbor's dog. "You know, that used to be the sweetest dog." Rebecca says from behind us.

"What happened?" I ask her.

She leans against the door. "He just changed."

"Do you remember when he changed?" Dean asks her, not looking away from the dog.

"I guess around the time of the murder." I walk away, leaving Dean and Rebecca there in the doorway.

I walk over to Sam, he's looking at a picture of the three of them. "So, the neighbor's dog went psycho right around the time Zach's girlfriend was killed."

He takes his eyes off of the picture and looks at me. "Animals can have a sharp sense of the paranormal."

From behind me Dean speaks up. "Yeah, maybe Fido saw somethin'."

"So you think maybe this is our kind of problem?" He says with a slight smile and a gloating look in his eyes that he normally gets when he's right.

Dean shakes his head. "No. Probably not. But we should look at the security tape, you know, just to make sure."

He so thinks that something's going on. Sam just nods. "Yeah."

"Yeah." Rebecca walks up to us. "So, the tape. The security footage—you think maybe your lawyers could get their hands on it, 'cause I just don't have that kind of jurisdiction."

She smiles. "I've already got it. I didn't want to say something in front of the cop." Dean laughs. "I stole it off the lawyer's desk. I just had to see it for myself."

"All right."

Dean leads us out of the house and back to Rebecca's where we gathered around the tv set and she put in the tape.

The tape shows Zach entering his house. "Twenty-two-oh-four, that's just after ten." Dean observes the time stamp in the corner of the screen. "You said time of death was about ten-thirty."

"Our lawyers hired some kind of video expert." Rebecca explains. "He says the tape's authentic. It wasn't tampered with."

"Hey Bec," We look at Sam. "Can we take those beers now?"

She nods. "Oh, sure." She goes to the kitchen.

"Hey," Sam stops her. "Maybe some sandwiches, too?"

With a smile she turns around. "What do you think this is, Hooters?"

And she's gone. "I wish." Dean mutters, I smack him on the arm. The two of us get up and walk over to Sam. "What is it?"

"Check this out." He rewinds the tape and replays the video.

One of the frames show Zach looking directly at the camera and his eyes flash silver. Sam pauses the tape. What was that?

"Well, maybe it's just a camera flare." Dean reasons.

"That's not like any camera flare I've ever seen." Sam says. I look between the two, not saying anything, I'm just not sure what this could be—it's a case, I know that, but I have no idea what we're dealing with. "You know, a lot of cultures believe that a photograph can catch a glimpse of the soul."

Dean just nods his head. "Right."

I put my hand on Dean's arm. "Remember that dog that was freakin' out? Maybe he saw this thing."

By now, Sam's nodding. "Maybe this is some kind of dark double of Zach's something that looks like him but isn't him."

"Like a Doppelganger."

"Yeah. It'd sure explain how he was two places at once." I agree.

Rebecca comes back out of the kitchen with four beers and sandwiches. "Here," she puts a plate of sandwiches on the table and hands us all a beer, we finish the plate almost as soon as she puts it down. It's been a while since we've eaten, an even longer time since we've had anything homemade. We've been living off of pizza and microwavable food. We don't really have time to make meals, besides, even if we did have the time, none of us knew how to cook—though maybe Sam learned how while he was away at college.

The three of us thanked her in between mouthfuls. "These are great—what are they?" Dean asks with his mouth full of sandwich.

"Ham and cheese, nothing special." She explained, looking at us odd. "Sam mentioned that you all didn't exactly have home cooked meals every day, but you three are eating these like you haven't eaten in days."

I swallowed before answering. "We've been on the road, very busy, no time to stop, and those two can eat everything in this house and still be hungry afterwards."

She laughs. "Yeah, I remember Jess complaining about how they never had any food over at their apartment for longer than five minutes."

Dean and I laugh while Sam glares at us. "Well, we should get going." Sam stands up and we follow him out the door. "It's nice to see you again, Bec."

"You too, Sam. Thanks for coming, by the way."

We get into the Impala and drive off to the nearest motel. The three of us lug our bags into the room and I claim one of the beds, throwing my duffel bag on it and peeling off my boots and the knife that I store in my left one.

"Whose turn is it to share?" Sam asks Dean who shrugs. "Rock paper scissors?"

As usual Sam wins. Grumbling Dean puts his duffel bag next to mine. "So, when's dinner?" Dean asks, moving to the couch.

"Chinese or pizza?" I call out, taking Sam's laptop and turning it on.

After we ate and Sam did some research Dean went to sleep, I followed shortly after, only to wake up at the ungodly hour of four-thirty in the morning. Believe it or not I woke up on my own. Shaking and from another nightmare. Sam's all ready awake, on his computer.

"Sam?" he jumps at the sound of my voice. "Why are you still up?"

"I was about to start waking up the two of you." Sam gets up from the table and shakes Dean. "We should go over to Zach's house again, I need to see something."

Groaning I grab my bag and go to the bathroom to get ready, taking my time. Sam may be able to stay awake and function properly but I can't. By the time I get out both of them are ready, Dean barely conscious, but dressed.

Sam heads for the door. "Come on." I share a look with Dean before following.

"Alright," Dean says as we get out of the Impala and stand in Zach's driveway. "So what are we don' here at five-thirty in the morning?"

"I realized somethin'." Sam's looking around the place. "The videotape shows the killer goin' in, but not comin' out." Ah, that is a bit weird, not weird enough to go to a murderer's house at this hour, but weird.

Dean's leaning against the car for support. "So, he came out the back door?"

Sam starts to walk towards a dumpster, talking, "Right. So there should be a trail to follow. A trail the police would never pursue."

"'Cause they think that the killer never left." I say, catching on to his train of thought. "And they caught your friend Zach inside."

Sam starts looking around the outside of the house when Dean calls out to him. "I still don't know what we're doin' here at five-thirty in the morning."

"Blood." Sam says. He's looking at a telephone pole. "Somebody came this way."

I follow him. "Yeah, but the trail ends. I don't see anything over here." An ambulance drives past us. "What the hell?"

"Check it out?" Dean asks, we nod and get back into the Impala. We pull up to a house where a man is being arrested. "What happened?" Dean asks a woman nearby.

"He tried to kill his wife. Tied her up and beat her." She explains. It's like what happened with Zach, but he didn't get to kill her here.

"Really?"

She looks back at the scene before her. "I used to see him going to work in the morning. He'd wave, say hello. He seemed like such a nice guy." Yeah, he seems real nice.

Sam and I look around the house as Dean stays there and talks to the police. All we found was a couple of trashcans with nothing our weird in them. We did find some of a trail, it's a dead end, it just ends suddenly, there's no way that he could've escaped unless he can teleport or fly or summon an animal or some other monster to carry him away without a trace.

I turn around when I hear Dean call out, "Hey, remember when in said this wasn't our kind of problem?"

"Yeah."

"Definitely our kind of problem."

I let a smirk appear on my face. I can't believe that he's finally admitting it now. "What'd you find out?"

"Well, I just talked to the patrolman who was first on the scene, heard this guy Alex's story. Apparently the dude was driving home from a business trip when his wife was attacked." Two places at once again.

"So he was in two places at once." Sam says.

Dean nods once. "Exactly. Then he sees himself in the house, police think he's a nutjob."

"Two dark doubles attacking loved ones in exactly the same way." I put in. "Could be the same things doin' it, too."

Sam pauses to think. "Shapeshifter?" Dean shrugs. "Something that can make itself look like anyone."

"Every culture in the world has a shapeshifter lore." I say, looking around us. "You know, legends of creatures who can transform themselves into animals or other men."

The mammoth nods. "Right, skinwalkers, werewolves."

"We've got two attacks within blocks of each other. I'm guessin' we've got a shapeshifter prowlin' the neighborhood." Dean says.

I look between the two of them. "Let me ask you this—in all this shapeshifter lore, can any of them fly?"

Both shake their heads. "Not that I know of."

"We picked up a trail here. Someone ran out the back of this building and headed off this way." Sam gestures to where the trail just ends.

Dean looks it over. "Just like your friend's house."

I turn away from them, looking at the trail. "Yeah. And, just like at Zach's house, the trail suddenly ends. I mean, whatever it is just disappeared."

"Well, there's another way to go—down." What? Oh. Down right where the trail ends is a manhole. Didn't think of that.

I bite my lip. "I'll wait up here, y'all can go in." Dean rolls his eyes and pulls off the manhole cover. "Ladies first."

Rolling my eyes I shove his hand away and climb down the manhole. It's dark and stinks, the ground's covered in a layer of water. I look around in it, nothing terribly out of the ordinary.

"I bet this runs right by Zach's house, too." Sam says as he gets off the ladder. "The shapeshifter could be using the sewer system to get around."

I see a pile that looks like throw up. "I think you're right. Look at this." The two of them come towards me. It's a pile of blood and skin on the ground. I can feel the disgust on my face and it's reflected in my brothers' faces.

"Is this from the victims?" Sam asks.

Dean takes out a pocketknife and holds up some of the skin, I fight to keep the bile down.

"You know, I just had a sick thought." Dean says. This should be good. "When the shapeshifter changes shape—maybe it sheds."

I mentally groan. I hope not, this is disgusting enough without shedding. "God I hope not."

Sam's on the same page as me, looking like he'd rather not think of it. "That is sick. Let's get out of here."

Following him we climb out of the sewer and go back to the Impala. Dean goes to the trunk and takes out some weapons.

He talks with his head buried in the arsenal. "Well, one thing I learned from dad, is that no matter what kind of shapeshifter it is, there's one sure way to kill it."

"Silver bullet to the heart." I recite.

"That's right."

Sam's phone goes off and he gets it. He walks a little way away, but close enough to where we can still hear him. "This is Sam." Dean hands me a gun loaded with silver bullets, I take it and tuck it into the back of my pants. "We're near Zach's, we're just checkin' some things out…What are you talkin' about?...Why would you do that?" I share a look with Dean. "Bec—" there's a pause. "We're tryin' to help…Bec, I'm sorry, but—"

Sam walks back over to us and I avoid looking at him. "I hate to say it, but that's exactly what I'm talkin' about. You lie to your friends because if they knew the real you, they'd be freaked. It's just—it'd be easier if—"

"If I was like you." Sam finishes.

"Hey man, like it or not, we are not like other people. But I'll tell you one thing. This whole gig—it ain't without perks." He hands Sam a gun, he takes it and we walk back to the sewer.

Dean walks ahead of us, I grab a hold of Sam's arm. "Hey, Sam." He doesn't look at me. "Sam." I pull him to a stop and force him to look at me. "I'm sorry. About your friend. About Dean. You okay?"

He nods. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just, sometimes I wish—" Sam stops himself.

I smile sadly. "Yeah, I get it. Me too."

We continue walking, catching up to Dean and following him into the sewer.

"I think we're close to its lair." Dean calls from in front of us.

"Why do you say that?" Sam asks.

Dean points next to Sam. "Because there's another puke-inducing pile next to your face." Sam turns and sees it on a nearby pipe and jumps back.

"Oh, God!" I start to smile.

Looking around Dean points his flashlight at a pile of clothes and more skin and blood on the floor. "Looks like it's lived here for a while."

"Who knows how many murders he's gotten away with?" I turn around and see the shapeshifter behind Dean. "Dean!"

He turns just in time to get punched by the shapeshifter. Dean falls to the ground and the shapeshifter runs away. I take out my gun and start firing, I hear Sammy doing the same thing, neither of us hit it. I go to Dean.

"Dean!" I call out, helping him stand, he's holding his shoulder.

"Get the son of a bitch!" the three of us run after it. It came above ground, but by the time we get out there he's nowhere in sight. There are people all around us, I shove my gun into my jacket and try to look like I hadn't just crawled out of a manhole.

I help Dean come out, his shoulder's hurt pretty bad. "All right." Sam says, looking around. "Let's split up."

"All right," Dean points over to where he could've gone. "I'll meet y'all around the other side."

I follow Sam, I keep my gun in my pants, my jacket pockets aren't big enough to fit it like Sam's. "You okay?"

Nodding I try to keep up with Sam. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just ready for this case to be over with. Why can't the monsters just die? Is that too much to ask?"

He chuckles. "Probably. Our luck isn't even good enough to give us one sunny day out of a thousand, why would we kill a monster on our first try?"

We get to the street corner and wait for Dean.

Dean calls out "Hey!" Both of us turn towards him. "Anything?"

"No, he's gone." Sam says.

"All right, let's get back to the car." We cross the street, Dean behind us.

We walk to the Impala. "You think he found another way underground?" I ask the two of them.

"Yeah, probably. You got the keys?"

Sam doesn't move for a second, thinking. "Hey, didn't dad once face a shapeshifter in San Antonio?"

A trick question? I scrunch up my eyebrows and give Sam a questioning look, he doesn't look at me, instead he focuses on Dean.

"Oh, that was Austin. It turned out not to be a shapeshifter, it was a though form. A psychic projection, remember?" He answers perfectly.

That seemed to work for Sam. "Oh, right. Here ya go." He throws the keys to Dean and walks away. Strange thing is, he caught it with his left hand. The one he injured.

I look at Sam and at the same time we pull out our guns. "Don't move!" Sam shouts.

"What have you done with him?" I have my gun aimed at his heart.

"Chill, it's me, all right?"

Sam shakes his head. "No, I don't think so. Where's my brother?"

"You're about to shoot him. Sam, calm down." He's not Dean. He can't be Dean.

"You caught those keys with your left." I say. "Your shoulder was hurt."

He shrugs it off. "Yeah, it's better. What do you want me to do, cry?" well, no, but completely forgetting that you even were hurt less than ten minutes.

"You're _not_ our brother." I spat out at him.

The shapeshifter steps closer to us. "Why don't you pull the trigger, then? Hm? 'Cause you're not sure. You know me, Annie."

"Don't." the next thing I know I'm out cold.

* * *

Slowly I open my eyes and I'm tied up. My hands and neck are bound to a wooden post. "Where is he?" I hear Sam saying.

I try to speak, but can't. There's another voice now. "You don't really wanna know." He chuckles, it's Dean's voice, but it doesn't sound like him at all though. I look to my right and see Sam, tied up to a post like me with Dean standing in front of him. It's not Dean though, it's the shapeshifter. "I swear, the more I learn about you and your family—I thought I came from a bad background."

"What do you mean, learn?"

There's a pause before the shapeshifter answers. I let my eyes slide back closed, it's easier. "He's sure got issues with you. You got to go to college. He had to stay home and watch his baby sister. I mean, I had to stay home and watch my baby sister. With dad. You don't think I had dreams of my own? But dad needed me, little Annie needed me. Where the hell were you?"

"Where is my brother?"

"I am your brother. See, deep down. I'm just jealous. You got friends. You could have a life. Me? I know I'm a freak. And sooner or later, everybody's gonna leave me."

"What are you talkin' about?" Sam asks.

"You left. Hell, I did everything dad asked me to, and he ditched me, too. No explanation, nothin', just poof. Left me with that burden and your sorry ass." I hear his footsteps coming towards me and open my eyes. "Oh and you," he touches my hair. "You never pulled your weight, always slowing us down. Why do you think that dad had you stay with Bobby so often? Or when he left you behind and out of the loop? You're just a waste, can't fight as well as me, aren't as smart as Sammy, what _can _you do? Besides get in the way, annoy the living hell out of us, and fuck everything up."

"Don't listen to him, Anne." Sam calls out.

I shake my head. "Shut up, you dick."

The shapeshifter laughs. "Oh, what would mommy say if she heard you using that kind of language?" With a smirk he starts walking back and forth between us. "But still, this life? It's not without its perks." Again he laughs. "I meet the nicest people. Like little Becky. You know, Dean would bang her if he had the chance. Let's see what happens."

The next thing I know there's a sheet being pulled over both of us. "Sam?" I call out, trying to get my knife out of my pocket.

There's a muffled, "Anne." Coming from Sam's direction.

"Almost out of your ropes?" I ask him.

"No, you?"

"Nope."

"Damn it."

There's movement somewhere outside of where I can see. "That better be you two, Sam and Annie, and not that freak of nature." I crack a smile and Sam laughs at Dean's voice.

"Yeah, it's us." Sam says. "He went to Rebecca's lookin' like you."

"Well, he's not stupid. He picked the handsome one." I snort and continue to work on my ropes. Eventually I give up on the knife and use the pole, making more progress like that but not enough to cut me loose.

I struggle trying to cut through the ropes as I answer. "Yeah, that's the thing. He didn't just look like you, he was you." I pause. "Or he was becoming you."

"What do you mean?"

Sam answers for me. "I don't know, it was like he was downloading your thoughts and memories."

"You mean, like the Vulcan Mind Meld?"

That made me smile. Dean always used to make us watch Star Trek when we were growing up. Sam didn't really like it, but, even though I will never admit it, I started to like it and watched it even when he was out with dad and Sam or when I was left at Bobby's or Pastor Jim's. I swore the both of them to secrecy, if Dean finds out he'd never let me live it down, constantly gloating and—he must never know.

"Yeah." I cut through a tiny bit of the rope. "Somethin' like that. I mean, maybe that's why he doesn't just kill us." Dean uncovers me and starts untying my ropes, then going and doing the same for Sam.

"Maybe he needs to keep us alive." Dean reasons. "Psychic connection." He gets Sam down too.

I go over to them, knowing that the rope burn on my wrists isn't going to go away anytime soon, no matter how much I rub it. "Yeah. Come on, we gotta go. He's probably at Rebecca's already." They lead the way and we climb out and onto the street. "Come on. We gotta find a phone, call the police."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa." Dean says, putting an arm out to stop Sam. "You're gonna put an APB out on me."

"Sorry." He shrugs in a very not sorry way.

I pat Dean on the shoulder in mock sympathy. "This way."

* * *

_"An anonymous tip led police to a home in the Central West End, where a S.W.A.T team disovered a local woman bound and gagged. Her attacker, a white male, approximately twenty-four to thirty years of age, was discovered hiding in her home." _The news reporter says and a sketch of Dean comes on to the screen.

Dean groans. "Man! That's not even a good picture." I roll my eyes, of course that's what he's upset about, it's a bad picture, not the fact that he's now wanted for attempted murder.

Looking around cautiously Sam says, "It's good enough."

The three of us walk away into an alley. "Come on." He pauses. "They said attempted murder. At least we know—"

"I didn't kill her." Dean finishes.

He nods at him. "We'll check with Rebecca in the morning, see if she's all right." Sam continues.

"All right, but first I wanna find that handsome devil and kick the holy crap out of him." We stop walking in the alley.

I turn to Dean. "We have no weapons. No silver bullets." Everything is in the car and the shapeshifter has that. There's nothing we can do to kill it now, no plan, no weapon, we're defenceless like this, and Dean's wanted by the police. Everything's just wonderful. Fantastic.

"The guy's walkin' around with my face, okay, it's a little personal. I wanna find him." He looks at the two of us with a determined look in his eyes.

I sigh, giving in, a look at Sam tells me that he is too. "Okay. Where do we look?"

"Well, we could start with the sewers." Dean says looking around at the ground for anymore manholes we can go down.

"We have no weapons. He stole our guns, we need more." There's silence, we're thinking where we can get weapons. "The car?"

"I'm bettin' he drove over to Rebecca's." Dean speaks.

Smiling now, I think we have a plan, and a pretty decent one at that, which is better than most of our plans. "The news said he fled on foot. I bet it's still parked there."

Dean frowns. "The thought of him drivin' my car."

The feeling of rolling my eyes at him comes to me, but I don't. Instead I say, "All right, come on." And we continue walking again.

"It's killin' me." Dean continues, still thinking of his car.

Now I roll my eyes. "Let it go."

When we get to Rebecca's house the Impala is there waiting. "Oh, there she is! Finally, something went right tonight." A police car appears and parks next to the Impala. "Oh crap." Turning around there's another police car a few yards away. "This way, this way." He moves towards a fence.

"You go. I'll hold 'em off." Sam says.

Dean pauses and turns to face Sam. "What are you talking about? They'll catch you."

I stay by Sam. "They can't hold me. Annie, go with Dean." I start to argue, but Sam pushes me into Dean and holds onto my arm, keeping me with him. "Just go, keep out of sight, meet me at Rebecca's." We start to go when Sam calls out, "Keep out of the sewers!" Dean hops the fence me right after him. "I mean it!"

"Yeah, yeah!"

I turn to Dean. "We're going into the sewers without him, aren't we?"

He gives me a smirk. "Yep."

We get to the car and the sun's starting to rise. "So, what's the plan? Grab some weapons and then disobey Sam?" I ask and he nods. "Cool."

In the trunk we load the guns with silver bullets and go back to the manhole, climbing down it into the sewer below. "Ugh, I hate this place so much." I say looking at the piles of skin and blood.

"I hear ya." We start to explore it, finding a whole lot of disgusting piles of skin and blood, but no shapeshifter. There's a noise in another part of the sewer and Dean motions for me to stay quiet and where I am. He pulls away a sheet and pulls it away, my gun aimed at the figure. It's Rebecca. She's tied up to a pole, like we were. "Rebecca?" I lower my gun slightly, not sure if the shifter is still here.

"What happened?" I ask, coming closer to them, taking out a knife to help cut her free.

She starts crying. "I was walking home, and everything just went white. Someone hit me over the head, and I wound up here just in time to see that thing turn into me. I don't know, how is that even possible?" You don't want to know, trust me.

"It's okay." We get her untied. "Can you walk?" Dean asks her and she nods. "Okay, we've gotta hurry. Sam went to go see you." He helps her stand up and we go back the way we came. I go up first and pull Rebecca out of the hole, Dean following after her.

The trip over there took some time, but when we got to the house Dean turns to me. "Stay with Rebecca, don't go in the house, okay?" I don't say anything.

He runs into the house. I turn to Rebecca and motion towards the house, she nods and we run after him inside. "Sam!" she yells once we get into the house. He's on the floor. I look around, the shapeshifter is also on the floor with Dean leaning over it.

I walk over to the shifter and Dean. "Is it dead?" I ask him and he nods. "Thank God. Sammy? You okay?"

I go over to where he's sprawled out on the ground and kneel next to him, grabbing his hand. "Yeah, I'm—" he coughs. "I'm fine."

"Good. You can't leave me alone with Dean, we'd cause the apocalypse." He chuckles, I help him stand up. "Dean?"

He comes over to us and throws an arm over my shoulder. "Let's go." I let him guide me out of the house and to the Impala. We wait for Sam to finish saying goodbye to Rebecca, they come out to the front yard, talking.

"Wonder what they're saying." I watch the two.

Dean looks up, bored. "Probably something smart and college related."

"Or something like, 'monsters are real? You fight them? But you went to college!' and then a lot of hugging or something." Dean laughs before turning his attention back to the map in his hands. "Where to next?"

"I don't know, maybe we can go where I was planning on going before all this, but I figure that Sam's gonna want to hide out for a while, I mean, I am wanted by the police." He shrugs the question off, and I look back at Sam and his friend.

They hug and Sam walks over to us. "So," Dean says. "What about your friend, Zach?"

"Cops are blamin' this Dean Winchester guy for Emily's murder. They found the murder weapon in the guy's lair, Zach's clothes stained with her blood. Now they're thinking maybe the surveillance tape was tampered with. Yeah, Becca says Zach will be released soon." He smiles and we get in the car. I get in the front seat, sitting in between the two. Sam's back on his phone and I pull out a book, one that Sam got me a while back for our birthday. I'm pretty sure he stole it (about a hundred percent sure) mainly because I don't think I've ever gotten a present from either Dean or Sam that wasn't stolen.

"I'm sorry, man." Dean says after we're a few miles out of the city.

I'm just as confused as Sam. "About what?" Sam voices my confusion.

"I really wish things could be different, you know? I wish you could just be…Joe College, and you Annie, I wish you could be normal too." He glances at us both.

"No," Sam says and I nod with him. "That's okay. You know, the truth is even at Stanford, deep down, I never really fit in."

"That's 'cause you're a freak." Dean says and I laugh. "What about you Annie?"

I shake my head. "Nah, I'd rather be around you two freaks than have a normal boring life. It'd be too boring, too dull. I need something to keep me entertained."

"We're all freaks, might as well stick together." We laugh. "Well I'm gonna miss it."

"What?" I ask.

"How many chances am I gonna have to see my own funeral?" I elbow him, but there's a smile on my face and I turn on the radio.

* * *

**A/N: so I'm thinking about doing an original chapter next, what do y'all think? **


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